Bill calls for four-day workweek in govt, private sector

An administration lawmaker on Monday filed a bill seeking to implement a four-day workweek in all government offices and private companies in the country, supposedly to enable workers to save more. Quezon City Rep. Winston Castelo filed House Bill (HB) 5237, which mandates the public and private sectors to switch to a 10-hour, four-day workweek from the current eight-hour, five-day workweek. "There won’t be any reduction in the required 40 hours of work every week, nor any cut back in service or productivity," Castelo said in a statement Monday. Castelo said the measure will allow Filipino workers to save at least 20 percent of their weekly expenditures. "If wages could not be raised due to multifaceted factors, which include the employers’ general aversion to legislated wage hikes, the alternative is to lessen the workers’ expenditures," he said. He added that the government and private employers can cut their maintenance and operational expenditures such as electric and water bills if the bill is enacted into law. Unproductive? Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) president Edgardo Lacson, however, said the bill, if enacted into law, will "harm employees, employers and the economy." "People will have a lot of unproductive time which they will use spending and not saving," Lacson said in a phone interview. He added that implementing a four-day workweek will just make people "unproductive" for almost half of the year. Lacson said that lawmakers should instead focus their attention on making legislations that will solve "bigger" problems such as unemployment. "If it isn’t broken, we really don’t have to fix it," he said. Earlier in the day, the Labor Department said it was open to the idea of a four-day workweek, even noting the fact that it had been implemented in the past. "Kung yan gagawing compulsory sa pamamagitan ng batas, meron na tayong experience diyan. Ang dahilan nakakatipid sa pamasahe tapos sa kuryente sa pagawaan at may flexibility sa pagpili ng araw," Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said in an interview on radio dwIZ. But Baldoz said that if such scheme will be implemented, the same should be approved by both the employers and the employees.

Additional day-off In pushing for the egislated four-day work week, Castelo said the setup will also allow workers to spend more time with their families and pursue their hobbies and other leisurely activities. "The additional day-off can push workers to pursue other productive activity, including learning new skills to retool himself and hone his competitiveness in the labor market," he said. He added that the House of Representatives, which is open only from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. from Mondays to Thursdays, proves that a mandatory four-day workweek can actually work. "Service and productivity is never compromised by the shorter work week and longer weekend," he said. The measure, however, gives heads of government agencies and private agencies the authority to waive the observance of the four-day workweek "in the interest of emergency, security, natural disaster and other justifiable reasons." Under HB 5237, employers caught not observing the mandatory four-day workweek may be charged with violation of the Labor Code of the Philippines. The bill will have to pass committee and plenary deliberations in both the House and the Senate before it can be signed by the President into law. — RSJ, GMA News