Six years after being promoted by the Communist Party, the reduction of the work week from 45 to 40 hours has received the official approval of Congress.
The average was approved by an overwhelming majority: 127 in favor, 14 against and three abstentions. The new law, which will be promulgated by President Boric, will be implemented gradually. In the period of one year the working day will be 44 hours, it will decrease to 42 in the third year of application and to 40 hours after five years. The move was welcomed by the International Labor Organization. Fabio Bertranou is director of the ILO for the Southern Cone of Latin America:
“For the ILO, it is a very important step in terms of labor legislation for Chile because it allows Chilean law to be aligned with the standard promoted by the ILO, of 40 hours of work per week. And it is a very important step for Latin America because there are few countries that have adopted this standard” says Bertranou.
Chile then becomes the third country in Latin America to approve the 40-hour work week, following Ecuador and Venezuela.
Presented as the Chilean government as a pro-family measure to improve the quality of life, there are small companies and workers who question the effective payment of overtime, as well as informal work of 27.3%, which escapes the law . Fabio Bertranou explains it like this:
“There is a concern on the part of some workers. Let’s remember that this legislation will apply to workers in the private sector, so some public sector workers are concerned because the composition of the salary depends to a large extent on the possibility of working overtime. There is a commitment on the part of the government to monitor the application of the law in the companies and there is an expectation in front of the government entities so that they also come together in this 40-hour week”.
Regarding informal workers, Bertranou believes that, since Chile is one of the Latin American countries with the least incidence of labor informality, this law would not have a considerable risk in the assembly of employees.
Let us remember that Latin America is one of the regions where more hours are worked per year, with one of the highest labor informality rates, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
