2023 Laws of Puerto Rico › TITLE TWENTY-NINE - Labor (§§ 1 — 3004) › PART I - Labor Provisions Generally (§§ 1 — 510k) › Chapter 13 - Working Hours and Days (§§ 271 — 299) › § 288 - Working hours—Definitions

The following definitions of words and phrases in §§ 271—288 of this title shall be accepted, unless it is otherwise deduced from the context hereof:
(1) Employee.— Includes every employee, workman, day laborer, artisan, laborer, clerk, shop clerk and every person employed for wages, salary, day wages, or any other form of compensation in any occupation, establishment, business, or industry, excepting traveling agents and peddlers. The word “employee” shall not include executives, administrators, or professionals, as these terms may be defined by the Puerto Rico Minimum Wage Board, nor labor union officials or organizers when acting as such.
(2) Employer.— Includes every natural or [juridical] person of any kind whether he operates for profit or not, and anyone who represents said natural or [juridical] person or who exercises authority in his name.
(3) To employ.— Is to allow or permit a person to work.
(4) Wage.— Includes salary, day wages, payment, and any other form of cash compensation.
(5) Occupation.— Includes all service, work, labor, help, or toil that an employee performs for his employer.
(6) Establishment.— Includes every building, house, factory, shop, property, estate, store, warehouse, office, public service enterprise, place, and site where work is executed, labor is performed, or any service is rendered, for pay.
(7) Labor contract.— Means every oral or written agreement by which the employee binds himself to execute a work, perform labor, or render a service for the employer for wages or any other pecuniary remuneration. If there is no express stipulation as to wages, the employer shall be obliged to pay the minimum wage fixed for the occupation, industry, or business in question, and, in defect of such determination, the wages that are customarily paid in the locality for similar work.
(8) Traveling agents.— Are those employees that exercise the function of traveling salesmen and whose work consists of carrying out transactions involving the sale of products, services, or any other tangible or intangible goods in behalf of an employer, whether or not he intervenes personally in the distribution or delivery of the product, service or goods, including any work or service incidental or related to the main sales activity. Usually, these people work outside of headquarters; they do not return to it daily; nobody has the daily supervision of their activities once they go out to sell; they use their own discretion as to the effort and time they should devote to their work, and the very nature of their work prevents the determination of real and effective hours worked every day.
(9) Peddlers.— Those employees who are engaged in the sale, offering for sale, the requesting, collection or distribution of any article, product or merchandise, or publicity material, in the street, in any public place, or from door to door, without the employer having any control over the hours of work it will take such employee to perform such activities outside the employer’s establishment.
The terms included in this section will not exclude any other term including agricultural, industrial, or commercial activities.
History —May 15, 1948, No. 379, p. 1254, § 19; Apr. 26, 1963, No. 11, p. 15; July 23, 1974, No. 223, Part 2, p. 161, § 6; May 5, 1976, No. 27, p. 65, § 3; June 3, 1983, No. 61, p. 132; renumbered as § 20 on July 20, 1995, No. 83, § 5.