For a company that manages its people from another country, working-time rules in Peru tend to look deceptively familiar. There is a daily limit, a weekly limit and an overtime premium, much as in many other jurisdictions. The difference lies in where the rule comes from and how little room it leaves. In Peru, the maximum is written into the Constitution, the exemptions are narrow and defined by function rather than by pay grade, and the burden of showing how many hours people actually worked falls heavily on the employer.
This article explains the ceiling, how averaging works, who is genuinely outside it, and what a foreign parent company should check before rolling out a regional schedule or flexible-work policy in Lima. It is part of our broader guide to working time in Peru.
The ceiling: 8 hours a day or 48 hours a week
Article 25 of the 1993 Constitution sets ordinary working time at a maximum of 8 hours a day or 48 hours a week. The statutory text that develops it, the consolidated Working Hours Law approved by D.S. 007-2002-TR, repeats the ceiling in its first article, and its regulation, D.S. 008-2002-TR, sets out operational detail.
Three consequences follow for employers:
- The limit is a floor of protection, not a target. An employer may set a shorter schedule by law, collective agreement or its own unilateral decision, and a shorter schedule, once granted, becomes the reference for measuring overtime.
- It cannot be waived. Article 26 of the Constitution establishes that constitutional and statutory rights cannot be renounced. A clause in which the employee “accepts” a 50-hour ordinary week has no effect.
- The “or” matters. The law expresses the limit in both daily and weekly terms. A five-day week of 9.6 hours per day reaches 48 hours weekly while exceeding 8 hours daily; this is typically handled as an alternative schedule within the averaging rules discussed below, and should be designed deliberately rather than by default.
Key point
In Peru, the maximum working day is a constitutional rule. A global policy, an offer letter or an employee’s written consent cannot push ordinary hours above 8 per day or 48 per week, except through a lawful averaging scheme.
What counts as working time
The ceiling applies to time at the employer’s disposal. Two practical points often decide whether a schedule complies.
Meal breaks. The employer must grant a meal break (refrigerio), which lasts at least 45 minutes and must fall within the working day. As a rule, it is not part of working time unless an agreement or established practice provides otherwise. We cover the details in our article on meal breaks in Peru.
Time the company controls. Pre-shift briefings, mandatory safety talks, required log-ins before a shift, travel between sites during the day and time spent waiting for instructions generally count as working time when the employee is under the employer’s direction. Global companies sometimes overlook these because their home-country systems only track “productive” hours.
Averaging: when a longer day is lawful
The Working Hours Law allows employers to establish alternative, cumulative or atypical schedules, whether daily or weekly, provided the average number of hours worked over the relevant period does not exceed the maximum. The Constitution itself contemplates this: in cumulative or atypical schedules, the average over the period cannot exceed the ceiling.
This is the legal basis for the rotations common in mining, energy, construction camps and remote logistics hubs: blocks of long days on site followed by blocks of rest. The logic is arithmetic. If a roster produces an average of 48 hours per week or less over its full cycle, the longer daily shifts are part of the ordinary schedule. If the average exceeds 48, the excess is overtime, with all its consequences.
Designing these rosters is a topic in its own right, covered in our article on atypical and cumulative work schedules in Peru.
Who is outside the maximum
Article 5 of the Working Hours Law excludes three groups from the maximum working day:
| Excluded group | What it means in practice | Common pitfall |
|---|---|---|
| Management personnel (personal de dirección) | Employees who represent or substitute for the employer, with decision-making power | Treating every “manager” title as management personnel |
| Employees not subject to immediate supervision | Roles whose time is not controlled by the employer in real time, such as some field sales positions | Classifying staff as unsupervised while tracking their hours through apps or GPS |
| Intermittent waiting, watch or custody work | Services where active work alternates with periods of inactivity | Applying the label to security guards who work continuously |
Two cautions apply. First, trust employees (personal de confianza, defined in the Productivity and Competitiveness Law as those with personal and direct contact with management or access to confidential information) are not excluded merely by that classification. They remain subject to the ceiling unless they also fall into one of the excluded groups, typically because they are not subject to immediate supervision. Second, Peruvian authorities apply the primacy-of-reality principle: what matters is how the job is actually done. A regional “Senior Manager” who clocks in, follows a set shift and reports to a supervisor who approves every absence is unlikely to be treated as exempt, whatever the global job architecture says.
Watch out
Exemptions in Peru are functional, not financial. A high salary, a global grade or an “exempt” flag in the group HRIS does not remove an employee from the 48-hour ceiling. If the company controls the employee’s hours, the exclusion for unsupervised staff is hard to sustain.
Legal framework at a glance
- Constitution, art. 25: 8 hours daily or 48 weekly as the ordinary maximum; averaging permitted in cumulative or atypical schedules; paid weekly and annual rest.
- D.S. 007-2002-TR, arts. 1–2 and 4: ceiling, power to set shorter schedules, and alternative, cumulative or atypical schedules subject to the average.
- D.S. 007-2002-TR, art. 5: exclusions for management personnel, unsupervised employees and intermittent workers.
- D.S. 008-2002-TR: regulation, including the minimum meal break.
- D.S. 004-2006-TR: duty to keep a permanent attendance record, including overtime, with parallel exclusions.
Illustrative scenario: a global flexible-work policy lands in Lima
Illustrative scenario (hypothetical): A technology group headquartered abroad adopts a worldwide “results-based” policy. Employees may choose their hours, no time tracking is required above a certain grade, and the global handbook describes the arrangement as “trust-based working time.” The Peruvian subsidiary, with 140 employees, implements the policy for 60 staff in analyst and team-lead roles.
Eighteen months later, two former team leads claim unpaid overtime. They present calendar invitations, chat logs and VPN connection data showing regular work until 9:00 p.m. The company has no attendance record for them, because the global policy did not require one.
What went wrong:
- The team leads had supervisors who assigned tasks, approved leave and expected availability during business hours. They were neither management personnel nor genuinely unsupervised.
- Without an attendance record, the company had no evidence of the hours actually worked, while the employees had digital traces.
- The policy had not been adapted to Peru: it did not set an ordinary schedule, did not provide an overtime authorization flow and did not address telework disconnection rules.
A local adaptation could have preserved flexibility: a defined ordinary schedule within the 48-hour limit, a flexible window for start and end times, a simple digital time record, and a written overtime approval process. The global policy could remain intact for other jurisdictions.
Checklist for foreign-owned employers
- Confirm that every ordinary schedule in Peru is at or below 8 hours daily and 48 weekly, or is a documented averaging scheme.
- Map each role claimed as exempt against the three statutory categories, and record the factual reasons.
- Align the job description, employment contract, payroll classification and actual practice for management and unsupervised roles.
- Keep an attendance record for all non-excluded staff, including remote and hybrid employees.
- Check that meal breaks are granted within the working day and that the schedule shows them.
- Review whether mandatory activities outside the shift (briefings, training, log-in routines) are counted as working time.
- Establish a written, voluntary overtime approval process; see our note on overtime in Peru.
- Review night-shift schedules against the night-work pay floor, explained in night work in Peru.
Common mistakes
Importing an exempt/non-exempt grid. Some home-country systems classify employees as exempt based on salary tests. Peru has no salary test for working time; the exclusions are defined by function.
Confusing “trust” with “exempt.” Designating a role as confianza has consequences, for example regarding the probation period, but does not by itself remove the employee from the maximum working day.
Leaving remote staff off the record. Telework does not suspend working-time limits. Peru’s Telework Law requires mechanisms to record the working day and recognizes a right to digital disconnection.
Scheduling six days of 8.5 hours. The weekly total, 51 hours, exceeds the ceiling unless an averaging scheme brings it back within 48.
Exposure
Excess hours that are not treated as overtime become a payroll liability: unpaid premiums, their effect on benefits where the payments are regular, and potentially the additional indemnity that applies when overtime is imposed. SUNAFIL, Peru’s national labor inspection authority, reviews schedules and attendance records in routine inspections. Working-time breaches can be classified as infractions, and fines are graded by severity and the number of affected employees, as explained in our note on how labor fines are calculated. Because a single policy often affects an entire employee group, exposure tends to scale quickly.
Legal note
The attendance record is the employer’s primary evidence. Where it is missing or incomplete, the employer will find it harder to rebut an employee’s account of the hours worked, especially if digital traces support that account.
Preventive recommendations
As a preventive criterion, we recommend treating Peru as a jurisdiction where the default position is coverage. Start from the assumption that every employee is subject to the ceiling and require a documented justification for each exclusion. For groups with genuine flexibility needs, design a local schedule framework (flexible windows, compressed weeks within the average, or telework arrangements) rather than switching off time controls. Review the framework whenever a global policy changes.
Our working time and overtime service helps companies map roles, redesign schedules and set up records that match how the business actually operates.
Key takeaways
Peru’s 8-hour/48-hour ceiling is constitutional, cannot be waived and is interpreted in light of how work is actually performed. Averaging gives real flexibility for rotations and compressed weeks, and a short list of roles falls outside the limit altogether. Outside those channels, extra time is overtime. For foreign companies, the key task is to translate global flexibility policies into a local framework that respects the ceiling and produces the records needed to prove it.