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Panama’s labour law needs updating into the 21st Century. This is particularly true in terms of changes in telecommunications and computing over the past 15 years. As such, labour law changes should allow telecommuting for employees, not just remote work.
The current state of affairs is antiquated. It dates back to a time when there was no possibility of doing most of these tasks from home. That is, it has not been updated for mobile phones, laptops, or internet connectivity that we have now.
The Labour Code allows no room for flexi-time or working from home, presupposing that employees must show up to work and «clock in». The technical requirements of «attendance», alone, demonstrate how the law has not kept up with the times and technology.
Additionally, the law presupposes that attendance is enough – with little attention paid to productivity. The assumption is that «time spent»equals «jobs completed».
Project #125 presents these labour law changes. The Commission for Work, Health and Social Development received the project on Thursday, August 29th. It will have to make it through three debates as well as presidential approval.
What is telecommuting?
Telecommuting ( e-commuting) is a work arrangement in which the employee works outside the office, usually from home. Under the current Labour Code provisions, I would strongly advise business owners to avoid this type of arrangement with their employees, to avoid falling foul of the labour department. Nonetheless, once the labour law changes come into effect, this would become an option for appropriate jobs.
Types of jobs where telecommuting would be possible:
The following jobs – without being freelance or independent contractors – are ones where employees could work from home, either all or at least some of the time. This would certainly impact Panama’s traffic jams!
- Accountants & some bookkeepers (assuming that financial information is on the cloud, rather than on local servers)
- Computer programmer, software engineer
- Data entry clerk – as long as Panama gets better internet coverage further than just «downtown»
- Engineer
- Financial analyst
- Graphic designer, illustrator, desktop publisher
- Insurance agent (many agents work as «independents» in Panama)
- Marketing planner, media buyer
- Medical transcriptionist, medical reviewer
- Paralegal – in fact, many lawyers in Panama do not have offices or share offices to have a conference room, without actually having office space. This is particularly true of sole-practitioners.
- Public relations professional, speechwriter
- Researcher, market research analyst
- Sales rep, customer service rep, travel agent
- Stockbroker
- Telemarketer, telephone order taker
- Translator – most translators in Panama are actually independents, who work as independent contractors, on a per document basis
- Virtual assistant – although this is typically an independent contractor
- Webmaster, website designer
- Writer, reporter, editor
For more information regarding the upcoming changes in the labour law, please do not hesitate to contact us.