Colombia: New Law introduces relevant labour disposals for Independent Workers

With the expedition of Law 2069 of 2020 specific guidelines were created regarding the following:

1. Family Compensation Funds: Affiliation of independent workers to family compensation funds will only require the completion of a single form available online through the Transactional Affiliation System (SAT).
2. Worker Cooperatives: The number of founder members required to start a worker cooperative were reduced from twenty (20) to three (3). Additionally, solidarity economy organizations are now classified as MIPYMES (meaning medium and small companies), as a result, these organizations will contribute to more employment generation and to the growth of the country’s economy. Furthermore, micro, small, and medium enterprises are now able to join cooperatives.
3. Remote Work and Digital Nomads: Congress invites government to regulate remote work accordingly to current reality. Therefore, rules must be different from those established for telework. Also, Ministry of Foreign Affairs is required to allow remote workers, teleworkers or long distant workers (also known as digital nomads) to work from Colombia.
4. Increasing Labour Productivity and Business Reactivation: Measures were taken to increase labour productivity and reactivate business. As a result, municipalities now can create Temporary Territorial Funds for the integral development of industries, family compensation funds are authorized to generate projects for business development of MIPYMES, and a human resource productivity enhancement program (FOSFEC) was created.

For more information on these articles or any other issues involving labour and employment matters in Colombia, please contact Alejandro Castellanos (Partner) of López & Asociados at alejandro.castellanos@lopezasociados.net or visit www.lopezasociados.net