AI and algorithms at work: your rights in Portugal (2026)

More and more companies use algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) to shortlist candidates, hand out tasks, rate performance and even dismiss people. The good news is that you have rights. And many of them are already in force in Portugal, since 2023.

This guide explains, with examples, what the company can and cannot do when a machine decides about your work. And what you can do when you think the decision was unfair.

An example first: when the machine decides for you

These two cases have something in common. A machine took an important decision about a person's life, with no explanation and nobody behind it.

The law calls this algorithmic management: using algorithms or AI to manage people at work. And it gives you concrete rights against the abuses.

What Portuguese law already guarantees you (since 2023)

In 2023, the so-called Decent Work Agenda (Law 13/2023) changed the Labour Code to respond to AI at work. It brought three strong protections.

1. The right to know the criteria (Art. 106 no. 3, point s). The company has a duty to inform you of the parameters, criteria, rules and instructions on which the algorithms or AI systems are based that affect your job. This covers access to a job, keeping the job and your working conditions. It includes profiling and the monitoring of your activity. In other words, it cannot be a closed box.

2. A ban on discrimination by algorithm (Art. 24 no. 3). The right to equality at work also applies to decisions based on algorithms or AI. A system cannot harm you because you are a woman, because of your age, your origin or any other prohibited reason. If it does, the general rule applies: discrimination is a very serious administrative offence (Art. 25).

3. Your representatives must be informed too. The company has to give the same information about the algorithms to the works council (Art. 424) and to the trade unions (Art. 466). This is so that someone with weight can monitor it, not only each worker alone.

[Common interpretation:] these rules are already in force. They do not depend on any future reform. If your company uses AI and never explained the criteria to you, it is failing a duty that already exists today.

The right to stop the machine: Article 22 of the GDPR

The GDPR is the European data protection law. It applies directly in Portugal. Its Article 22 gives you a protection that is simple to understand.

You have the right not to be subject to a decision taken solely by automated means, when that decision has legal effects or significantly affects you. Being dismissed, being rejected in a recruitment process or losing a bonus all fit here.

When the decision is one of those, you can:

• Ask for human intervention. A person at the company has to review the decision.
• Give your point of view on the case before the decision is final.
• Contest the result.

[Common interpretation:] the company can use AI to help decide. What it cannot do is let the AI decide your future on its own, with nobody responsible and without hearing you.

The AI Act: the European layer that is coming

The AI Act is the European regulation on artificial intelligence (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689). It sorts AI by levels of risk.

AI used in employment and worker management is in the highest level: high-risk (Annex III). This covers systems that recruit, screen candidates, hand out tasks, rate performance or support promotion and dismissal decisions.

For these systems, the company that uses them has reinforced duties. Two of them touch you directly:

• Being told. Before using a high-risk AI system at work, the employer has to inform the workers' representatives and the affected workers.
• A right to an explanation. If a decision with important effects on you is based on one of these systems, you have the right to a clear explanation of the role the AI played in that decision.

The dates, honestly. The AI Act high-risk rules were planned to start on 2 August 2026. In May 2026, the European Parliament and the Council reached a political agreement to postpone them to 2 December 2027, inside the "Digital Omnibus" package. That postponement was tagged [Provisional agreement] and was not yet published as law at the time of this guide. What does not change: in Portugal, the rights in the Labour Code and the GDPR already apply today, whatever the AI Act calendar is.

Digital platforms: couriers, drivers and algorithms

Platform work is the purest case of algorithmic management. There is no human boss in front: there is an app.

The 2023 law names the use of algorithms and AI in platform work as one of the areas to regulate (Art. 9 of Law 13/2023). So people who work on platforms have the same rights as in this guide:

• To know the criteria the app uses to give work, rate and block.
• Not to be treated in a discriminatory way by those criteria.
• Not to be blocked by a purely automated decision without being able to ask for a review by a person.

[Common interpretation:] an account deactivation with no explanation and no human review is exactly the type of decision that Art. 22 of the GDPR aims to stop.

Summary: which law gives you what

What you can do now

• Ask for the criteria in writing. If the company uses AI to rate you or decide about you, ask for the information you are entitled to (Art. 106). Keep the reply, or the lack of one.
• Demand a person. If an automated decision seriously affects you, ask in writing for a review by a person (Art. 22 of the GDPR).
• Keep proof. App messages, emails, screenshots. Anything that shows the decision was automated and without explanation.
• Do not sign anything in a hurry. A decision by a machine does not force you to accept right away.

What if the decision is a dismissal?

Watch one important point. Even if an algorithm "flags" your name, the dismissal still needs a legal ground and a valid process. AI does not create a reason for dismissal that the law does not allow. If you were dismissed based on an automated decision, the dismissal has to meet the same rules as always.

See Can my employer fire me? Check if it is legal.

Related guides

See Pay transparency law 2026: what changes in recruitment.

See How to file an ACT complaint in 10 minutes.

See 10 basic rights of people working in Portugal.

This guide is for information purposes and does not replace individual legal advice.