With the aim of improving the productivity of certain activities, considerably reducing expenses within the company, progressively eliminating the trial industry and labor conflicts and reducing labor accidents by employers; and on the part of the dependents, to develop and expand creativity and the human psyche, managing their time and having better living conditions, without cuts in wages or cuts in income, achieving a well-being of greater autonomy over the time of each one and their personal projects going from quantity to quality.
We are in the era of the 4th industrial revolution, the technological revolution, the era of automation and globalization where the work is qualitative and less quantifiable, it is being implemented in different countries, the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Iceland, Norway, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Colombia, Chile, among others, a contraction of the working day. Work or employment relationships as you know them no longer make sense. The technological era is here and we must adopt it and mutate towards the work of the future where investment in human capital through training and the incentive of quality of life, after a virus that stalked the entire world, made human relations change.
It translates into 8 hours per day from Monday to Friday, (there are 40 hours plus 8 hours on Saturday); either
It is possible 9 hours per day, (45 hours per week and 3 hours on Saturday).
The ninth hour is not extra, but the tenth is. You should always not exceed 48 hours per week.
In April 2021 I introduced the concept of “quality of life – quality of work”. In it we have one of the advantages, that the worker manages to better manage his time, generates a greater retention of talent, which can be translated into greater productivity.
The concept of “quality of life – quality of work”, can increase productivity and generate more genuine employment, allowing at the same time time the reduction of labor conflicts and a better quality of life for employees.
Around the world, the reduction of the work day is being discussed in pursuit of increased productivity, cost reduction and recreation and recreation for employees.
In general terms, the ILO is preparing reports to implement reduced hours in Latin America, part of Africa and South Asia, where the hours are extremely long.
According to ILO data, the countries with shorter working hours and high rates of labor productivity are the Netherlands, Australia, Norway, Denmark and Mexico.
Globally, more than 40% of dependent employees work 40-hour weeks.
The reduction in working hours goes hand in hand with the productivity of the economy and the balance of the costs of the companies. This problem underlies a social reality and its limitation for cultural, biological, technical and human reasons.
When I point to the reasons of a biological nature, I am referring to the need that every person who works has to have adequate rest time to replenish the energy required by their personal and work lives.
It is technically proven that the quality of work and the production capacity of a person tends to decrease with the continuous passage of hours of work in excess.
In the evolution of legal regulations, especially of an international nature, there is a marked tendency to reduce the weekly limit from 48 to 40 hours. ILO Convention 47 establishes a maximum workday of 40 hours per week, in line with the most industrialized countries and with clarification that this should be applied in such a way that it does not imply a decrease in the standard of living of workers. Argentina did not ratify this agreement or adhere to its recommendations. Current situation: it has one of the longest working hours in the world of 48 hours a week.
As part of the process of change aimed at a better quality of life for dependent workers, countries such as Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Japan and Sweden, among others, have begun to implement the reduction of working hours on an experimental basis, what I call as “quality of life – quality of work”, under the motto that the quality of adequate hours will exceed the number of hours worked.
According to this modality, the worker will have the possibility of going to his job at convenient times for the company, provided that a minimum base of effective working hours is met. This allows a better administration of working hours based on the free time of the workers (family, social, personal) and a considerable increase in the production of the companies. The experimental results are encouraging, taking into account the social, economic and cultural benefit.
As it is discussed and debated with strong support throughout the world to bring quality to the labor market and leave quantity, we should not be fools, in our country, mainly, to modernize the employment contract law, 20,744, our “Labor code” that regulates all private employment in our country and that its antiquity and obsolete cause the labor market to be immersed in a decadence won by the trial industry, black employment and the disparity between the two most important and essential in any production process, the employee and the employer.
Argentina deserves a serious, deep and modern debate on the need to modernize the labor market and adapt labor standards to the world in which we live.
With the rise of technology, a new division of production tasks between automation and people began to take shape. This new production task goes hand in hand with one of the most important production factors, the investment of human capital, where quality far exceeds quantity.
We must not think of the digital transformation as a threat but as something that has come to complement, to improve and even to create new needs and jobs. Technology makes tasks more bearable -especially those that are more operational-, and also allows greater efficiency in terms of costs and time.
What we must avoid is that this debate is liquefied and emptied of content by entering the football logic of the crack. But in light of events, so far neither on one side nor the other, there seems to be an intention to deal responsibly with a crucial issue for our future.
We find ourselves living what has been called the fourth industrial revolution. This process of technological and industrial development implies the use of all technical and human resources, which since the pandemic have accelerated remarkably.
As we see, the challenges of the labor market of the future are multiple, which is why we must think about public policies that allow us to move towards full employment, helping those who generate it and directing the training and growth of workers, entrepreneurs and private employment. .
Lawyer Specialist in Labor Law. President of APREEA
Source: Ambito
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