Five days away from work when a close family member dies
In the opening months of 2024, Peru quietly rewrote the terms of its social contract with workers, extending protections into the intimate corners of life — grief, new fatherhood, and the search for a first job. The reforms, arriving through ministerial decrees and congressional votes, reflect a society negotiating what it owes its people in moments of vulnerability and transition. From bereavement leave to digital labor certificates, the changes ask a persistent human question: how much does the workplace owe the whole person?
- Workers who lose a spouse, parent, child, or sibling can now step away for at least five days — longer if the funeral is far — without risking their job or their pay.
- A new digital certificate consolidates criminal records, work history, and education into a single free document, cutting through the bureaucratic maze that has long slowed hiring.
- Labor disputes can now be resolved entirely online, removing the burden of courthouse visits from workers who often cannot afford the time or the travel.
- Companies hiring young workers aged 18–29 can claim a 50% income tax reduction, while textile and agribusiness sectors receive their own reinvestment and deduction incentives.
- A congressional proposal to triple paternity leave — from 5 to 15 days, with costs shared by the national health system — has cleared committee and is building toward a vote.
Peru's labor landscape shifted in late 2023 and early 2024, as a series of reforms moved through ministries and Congress to reach nearly every worker in the country.
The most personal change was bereavement leave: private sector employees can now take five days off when a close family member dies, with additional time granted based on how far they must travel to attend funeral services. Workers simply notify their employer and return with a death certificate or sworn statement.
At the same time, the Ministry of Labor finalized the Unified Labor Certificate — a free, online document that consolidates a person's criminal record, work history, education, and training into one place. The goal is to simplify hiring for employers and reduce the paperwork burden on job seekers. The Ministry also decriminalized distance from labor disputes, allowing administrative conciliations between workers and employers to take place entirely online.
For younger Peruvians, the Young Entrepreneur Law brought a 50% income tax reduction to companies that hire workers between 18 and 29, provided the hire is new to the payroll and earns no more than 1,700 soles. Larger industries also received attention: textile, agricultural, and agribusiness companies can deduct an extra 70% on new hires when calculating income tax, and agribusiness exporters see their health insurance contribution drop to 6%.
Still pending in Congress is an expansion of paternity leave — from the current five days to fifteen for standard births, and twenty-five for premature or multiple births — with the additional days funded by the national health insurance system rather than employers alone. The measure has cleared committee and carries real momentum into the months ahead.
Peru's government and Congress spent the closing months of 2023 and the opening weeks of 2024 rewriting the country's labor rulebook. The changes arrived quietly—published in the official gazette, filtered through ministry announcements—but they touch nearly every worker in the country, and reshape how employers hire, manage, and support their staff.
The first change arrived in December, when the Ministry of Labor released the rules for what amounts to a new right: five days away from work if a close family member dies. The law applies to private sector workers whose spouse, parent, child, or sibling passes away. The five days is a baseline, though. If a worker lives far from where the funeral will be held, the time off stretches longer—the exact duration determined by a distance chart that courts have used for years. To claim the leave, a worker tells their boss or HR department when they need to go and for how long. When they return, they bring proof of the death—a death certificate, or if they don't have one, a sworn statement saying where and when it happened.
Around the same time, the Ministry of Labor finalized a document that had been pending since June: the rulebook for something called the Unified Labor Certificate. Starting now, anyone over eighteen can get it free, entirely online. The certificate pulls together a person's criminal and judicial history, their work experience, their formal education, and any training they've completed. It's designed to speed up hiring—employers can see what they need to know without asking for documents from a dozen different places. The Ministry hasn't set a hard date for when the system goes fully live, but workers can already access their background information through the Labor Ministry's website.
The government also moved to untether labor disputes from the courthouse. In December, the Ministry issued a decree allowing labor conciliations—the administrative process where workers and employers try to settle disagreements without going to court—to happen entirely online. No more traveling to an office, no more sitting in a waiting room. The change was meant to speed things up and make the system less burdensome for both sides.
For young people trying to start a business, the government dangled significant tax breaks. The Young Entrepreneur Law, which took effect in January, offers companies a fifty percent reduction in income tax when they hire workers aged eighteen to twenty-nine. The companies also get refunds on sales tax for exports, and the paperwork to register a new business gets simpler. When young-led companies bid on government contracts, they get a five percent boost to their technical score. But there are conditions: the young worker can't have been on a company payroll for at least twelve months before being hired, their salary can't exceed seventeen hundred soles, and the contract has to start on or after January first, 2024.
Larger companies in specific industries got their own incentive package. A law passed in late 2023 targets textiles, agriculture, and agribusiness. Textile companies get tax breaks if they reinvest profits. Any company in these sectors that hires new workers in 2024 gets to deduct an extra seventy percent when calculating income tax. For agribusiness exporters, the health insurance contribution drops to six percent—a savings that comes at the expense of other taxpayers who have to make up the difference.
One more change is still working its way through Congress. The Labor and Social Security Commission approved a proposal in late January to expand paternity leave. Currently, fathers get five days off when a child is born, paid by the employer. The new plan would stretch that to fifteen days for a normal birth or cesarean, with the extra ten days paid by the national health insurance system. For premature births or multiple births, fathers would get twenty-five days. The measure hasn't become law yet, but it has momentum.
Citações Notáveis
The Ministry of Labor and Employment is charged with implementing policies and programs to generate and improve employment, contribute to the development of micro and small businesses, promote professional training, and ensure compliance with labor laws and improved working conditions.— Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTPE) mandate
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does Peru need all these changes right now? What problem are they trying to solve?
The economy has been uneven. Young people struggle to find formal work, and employers say the old rules make it hard to hire. At the same time, workers want more security—better leave policies, clearer rights. These laws try to push both directions at once.
The bereavement leave seems straightforward. But why adjust it by distance? That's oddly specific.
Because Peru is huge and spread out. If you live in Lima and your parent dies in the highlands, you can't get there and back in five days. The law recognizes that reality instead of pretending everyone lives in the same city.
The labor certificate—is that actually useful, or just another document?
It consolidates things. Right now a young person looking for work has to gather papers from different places. This pulls it all into one place, free, online. It removes friction. Whether employers actually use it depends on whether they trust it.
The tax breaks for hiring young people—do they actually work?
That's the bet the government is making. The theory is that if hiring a young person costs less, employers will take a chance on someone with no experience. Whether it changes behavior at scale, we'll see.
And the paternity leave expansion—that's still just a proposal?
Yes. The commission approved it, but Congress hasn't voted. It's interesting because it shifts some cost from employers to the health system. That's a different kind of politics.
What's the through-line here? What's the government actually trying to do?
Formalize the informal economy and make hiring cheaper. Get more young people into regular jobs. Give workers more breathing room. It's a package that tries to satisfy everyone—employers, workers, young people. Whether it works depends on whether the incentives are strong enough to change actual behavior.