Workers in Portugal could see healthier work-life balance under new labour laws
I&#x27;ve been living in Portugal for 3 years now. I&#x27;m from the UK, I&#x27;m not tax-exempt, I speak basic Portuguese, I live rurally in Central Portugal, I mostly socialise with other foreigners.<p>I&#x27;m also a foreigner commenting on a diverse country into which I only have a narrow view. My experience may not be representative.<p>Bearing all that in mind, here is a random collection of my experiences for those who are interested:<p>EMPLOYMENT<p>There isn&#x27;t much work here for foreigners. Definitely not much skilled work, but there is occasional low-skilled manual work involving working on the land, construction etc. This kind of work is paid at about €6&#x2F;hour. Many of the foreigners I know do remote work (language teaching, translation, graphical work).<p>There also isn&#x27;t much work here for locals, but with an additional spin. When I first arrived here the land I own was very overgrown and needed a lot of work done. I made a conscious effort to try to employ local young-ish people to help, but the work was very unreliable in a variety of ways (quality, reliability, people getting into fights and feuds). I&#x27;ve come to the rough conclusion that all the young locals who can leave this area have left (for the cities, or UK&#x2F;France), and everyone who remains are those who could not leave for whatever reason. I don&#x27;t blame them, especially as I know some of them were dealt a really crappy hand.<p>The result is that as an employer it is hard to find good people. I know this doubly now as I have also started an ISP here. We go to the local startup accelerator and ask if there is anyone who we can hire to help us with marketing, and nothing. They&#x27;ve gone to Lisbon, improved their marketing skills, and not come back (because why would they)<p>In the end we use something like UpWork and hire people in Lisbon&#x2F;Porto to do the work for us. Thereby sending more money to the cities.<p>BUSINESS<p>I think there are an increasing number of businesses who&#x27;s customers are 95% foreigners. I know a Portuguese guy who sells firewood who says as much. I run an ISP and it is definitely the case.<p>LAND PRICES<p>I&#x27;m broadly aware that land prices are going up around here. Foreigners that come here mostly want to live on land, outside the villages. Typically this land has not be maintained for a long time because the owners become old, decided to stop farming it, and open a shop in the village instead (as the previous owner of my land did). The locals generally prefer to live in the villages. Yes there will be overlap, but my intuition says that rural-land-prices and village-house-prices are not rising at the same rate.<p>GENERAL ATTITUDES<p>As long as you speak some Portuguese, the locals are happy to have you (at least from what I can tell). Be nice, be friendly, always help someone out if you can (even if you&#x27;re busy), and it seems to be fine.<p>Most of all, take care of the land. Many of the locals remember how the area looked 50 years ago and are sad to see it become an overgrown wilderness (esp in forest fire season). When I&#x27;m cleaning up the road-facing part of my land, every single person that comes past gives me a big smile and a thumbs up. Seeing those fruit trees producing again, rather than being full of brambles, starts to bring the area back to life.<p>The older people seem to respect practical skills and actually doing the work. I think they have seen a generation of &quot;druggards&quot; (AFAIK, drug-taking drop-outs) not really contributing anything. So they respect people who come here and actually do the work themselves.<p>LANGUAGE<p>People under the age of 40 typically speak English as a second language, people over 40 (ish) typically speak French as a second language.<p>When I first moved here it was normal to go into a shop&#x2F;cafe etc and you would <i>have</i> to speak Portuguese (unlike Lisbon&#x2F;Porto, where English is somewhat standard). That has been changing a bit over the last few years as more and more foreigners come to this area. Shops increasingly try to ensure they have someone on staff with good English. (no value judgement either way from me)<p>Portuguese people will acknowledge that Portuguese is a very hard language, but they&#x27;ll also point out that you can get free classes in the local city. I interpret this as, &quot;It&#x27;s hard, but you gotta at least try&quot;<p>FOREIGNER TYPES<p>I see three kinds of foreigners moving to this area: retirees, hippies, and professionals. The last category is where I am, and it is the smallest category, but it is steadily growing. We typically move here with some remote&#x2F;passive income stream and split our time between earning money and house building. The money we earn we funnel into building supplies, and also vehicles &amp; equipment.<p>FINAL CAVEAT<p>I have experienced all of the above, but yeah, I&#x27;ve only lived here for a few years. I&#x27;m not saying anything of the above is universal at all, and I&#x27;m sure it isn&#x27;t the entire picture.