Government and legislators open the door to the possibility of reducing the working day

The reduction in working hours could be the next issue on the labor policy agenda. Both the government and legislators have shown openness to analyze a cut to the maximum established in federal regulations.

Luisa María Alcalde Luján, head of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS), told El Economista that the reduction in working hours is one of the pending issues to be discussed, as is the regulation of work on digital platforms.

In Latin America there is a wave of changes in the regulation of working hours. Colombia approved a gradual reduction of six hours of his workday, so that it goes from 48 to 42 hours a week. Chile is another example, the country is in a process of legislative analysis to cut the legal maximum from 45 to 40 hours.

In this context, the Congress of the Union adds nine projects that aim to reduce the working day. Only in the last four months, five proposals have been presented in the Senate with this objective.

For Carlos Ferran Martínez, coordinator of the Labor Commission of the Illustrious and National Bar Association (INCAM), the Reduction of the working day in Mexico “it is viable”, especially considering that the country has made important legislative advances in labor matters.

“Mexico has gradually moved closer to more labor legislation. to this to what current circumstances demand; Mexican legislation It has been characterized by its lack of flexibility and inability to change, and in the last 10 years we have seen substantial changes. This has served for the Legislative Power to turn to see several of the great labor pending that we have had for a long time and one of them is the reduction of the working day”, explains the specialist.

Currently, the Federal Labor Law (LFT) establishes a 48 hour work limit per week, this is so because the maximum working day is eight hours a day for six consecutive days. Despite this, the National Occupation and Employment Survey (ENOE) reports that there are 10.3 million subordinate workers who work more than 48 hours per week, which is equivalent to 26% of the country’s salaried population.

Until now, the legislative proposals go for a reduction of between 6 and 12 hours per week, which would imply setting a daily working day of between 6 and 7 hours maximum. Some proposals propose a cut in work days so that people enjoy by law two days off for every five days worked.

In this sense, Alejandra Massud, partner at GLZ Abogados, believes that the reform that could have the greatest consensus is the one that proposes a cut of six hours of work per week, that is, establishing a maximum limit of seven hours a day. “I think it would not complicate the day-to-day of the companies so much because it would only be subtracting an hour.”

Specialists in Labor Law agree that a legal modification in this matter will require a long transition period. In the case of Chile, for example, at the end of 2001 a cut in the working day was approved to go from 48 to 45 weekly hours, with a transition that concluded in 2005.

Andrés Marinakis, specialist in Market Policies and Labor Institutions of the ILO for the Southern Cone of Latin America, acknowledges that working hours They have been pressured by an evolution in production processes, such as industries that must operate 24 hours a day and a tendency for services to be close to the client.

From the specialist’s perspective, a current challenge of the working day “is to reconcile the needs of companies to incorporate some flexibility that contemplates their production cycles and the expectation of workers that this flexibility allows them to improve their quality of life”, but with a limit on daily and weekly working hours, with minimum rest periods and “without covertly dismantling labor relations.”

What would be the scope of a reform to the LFT?

If Mexico advances in a reduction of working hoursCarlos Ferran Martínez, also a managing partner of the firm Ferran Martínez Abogados, explains that it must be borne in mind that this legal modification may not benefit everyone, since there are people who have a five-day weekly shift and do not exceed the legal limit.

Although currently employers, says the specialist, can offer a day less than 48 hoursIt is also true that “the law generates behavior patterns and if it says that you can work up to 48 hours, surely most of the companies that seek to reduce the working day are not”. In this sense, he adds, a reform in this matter would help reduce working hours for those who work with the legal maximum.

Another scenario, anticipates Alejandra Massud, are the adjustments that would have to be made in contracts and in work shifts, this also includes those who telework. “I think it has been making a lot of noise because we are not talking about one, but about several initiatives and this can make enough noise for one of them to gain the necessary strength to become a reform.”

The regulation of the day It is one of the key elements in labor relations for more than a century, proof of this is that the first agreement of the International Labor Organization (ILO) is on working hours in the industry, where it was established that no it could exceed eight hours a day.