SUNAFIL labor inspection defense in Peru

An inspection by SUNAFIL, Peru’s national labor inspection authority, can begin with an unannounced visit, a message in the company’s electronic mailbox or a summons to appear with documents. For a foreign-owned company, the first hours matter most: the local team may not know what can be asked of it, the regional office may not hear about it until a deadline has almost passed, and documents may be produced without anyone checking what they show.

The business problem

Inspectors have wide powers. They can enter workplaces without notice, request documents, interview employees and order the company to correct infringements within a set period. Refusing entry, failing to attend a summons or ignoring a compliance order are infringements in their own right. The facts an inspector records in an infringement report are presumed true unless the company proves otherwise.

Fines are set per infringement and graded by severity, number of employees affected and company size, within legal caps expressed in UIT (Peru’s tax reference unit, S/ 5,500 in 2026). The rules also reward correction: an infringement cured before the infringement report is issued benefits from a 90% reduction of the proposed fine, and later correction can still reduce the fine at subsequent stages. Knowing when to correct and when to defend is the core of the strategy. Our guide to labor inspections in Peru explains the full process.

How we approach it

We first stabilize the situation: identify the inspection order, its scope and every pending deadline, and make sure the local team knows how to interact with the inspector. We then review documents before they are produced, so that the company knows what they will show and can explain it.

For each matter under review we make a clear call. Where there is a real and curable infringement, we usually recommend correcting it promptly and documenting the correction; our note on curing labor infringements explains the reductions available. Where the facts are disputed or the inspector’s interpretation is doubtful, we build the defense. We attend visits and appearances with the company’s representative and, if an infringement report is issued, we handle the sanction proceeding, the appeal and, where justified, the review before the Labor Inspection Tribunal (the administrative appeals body). Practical guidance for the first day is in our note on what to do when SUNAFIL inspects your company.

What the engagement includes, and its limits

The service covers response planning, document review, attendance at visits and appearances, written submissions, defenses, appeals and requests for reductions. It ends with the administrative proceeding; judicial challenges are a separate engagement.

We cannot promise that a fine will be avoided or reduced. What we can do is make sure the company meets every deadline, produces accurate documents and puts its position on record in the way that gives it the best chance.

Coordination with the parent company, finance and payroll

Regional offices need to know what is happening without reading the file. We send short bilingual status reports at each milestone, with an estimate of exposure that finance can use for provisioning. Most inspections turn on payroll records, so we work directly with the payroll provider to reconstruct calculations and, where an infringement is cured, to process corrective payments properly. After the inspection, we recommend an employment audit of the areas the inspector did not reach.

Getting started

If an inspector is on site or a deadline is running, contact us immediately with the inspection order and any documents received. We will confirm the first steps the same day.