Reduction of Working Hours

Currently, thanks to the various conventions endorsed by the International Labor Organization, regarding labor laws, their improvements and modifications, employees or workers have benefited from the stipulation of their working hours with reductions in various situations, such as: tasks that imply a risk to the worker's health, work in environments cryogenic, work inherent to the exploitation of mines and hydrocarbons, construction work of large works, among other cases.

Collective agreements and working hours

The working day is previously established, legally and is supported in the labor contract, the figure of collective agreements is the way in which must be given the reductions of the working day from the maximum duration to a day agreed between the employer and employee.

However, there are

specific cases in which working hours are reduced, in special situations, such as detailed below:

• In cases in which a minor is in need of work, they must enjoy the benefit of the reduction of working hours. The laws protect the minor, in this sense they should not have the same hourly load of a worker adult, in principle because he is in training and is at the age of academic preparation prior to job.
• Workers who have previously agreed permission to study an academic career that after obtain the degree, with the commitment to practice professionally within the company where they are working.

Types of reduction of working hours

• Reduction of temporary or agreed working hours, prior collective agreement between employer and employees and according to the circumstances of each worker.
• Structured workday reduction, the rise of telematics, the development of technology, the emergence of automation and the use of robotics, have decreased employee work and In some cases, it has replaced human resources with machines, affecting both productivity in the primary or agricultural sector as well as the industrial and commercial sectors. services.

Factors that affect the reduction of the working day

• Increase in industrial production and economic growth, implying an increase in the productivity, therefore, generation of rotating schedules to less working hours.
• Automation, mechanization, robotization, implementation of computing and technologies applicable to industrialization and service provision.
• Unemployment structured, in cases where regions or countries are going through a financial or economic crisis, jobs are reduced, contracts collective and labor benefits, increasing the hiring of temporary or piecework services in order to pay for productivity without increasing liabilities labor.
• Improvement of working conditions, product of social or union struggles, where workers could enjoy a better quality of life, by virtue of the fact that their salary remuneration does not It decreases with the reduction of the working day, but rather that among its labor benefits, is the power to enjoy more hours of rest for leisure or growth personal.
• The growth of consumption, especially at the level of middle-class societies, which are the buyers par excellence, which generates an industrial and commercial overproduction, forging jobs and redistribution of working hours.
• Protection of nature or ecological care, by virtue of preserving nature, some companies have decreased their productivity and therefore have reduced the hours of their workers.
• One of the improvements of current international labor laws is that the role of paternity, giving it the possibility to the parent worker, to be able to enjoy the benefit of caring for his child if at any time required.

Proposals to reduce working hours

• 7 to 5 day work week, carried out at the time of the industrial revolution. Since the beginning of the industrial Revolution, the working day became the whole week without a day off, later in western countries achieved that the weekend of rest being like this on Saturday and Sunday two days achieved for the rest of the employee.
• 32-hour workweek, in some European countries due to the increase in unemployment, the working day turns from Monday to Thursday.
• 30-hour workweek, implemented only in some European countries, the proposal achieves a reduction of the weekly workday of 30 hours without a salary reduction.
• 25-hour work week, promoted in Spain, seeks to reduce the working day to 25 hours a week.
• 21-hour workweek, well-founded studies consider that the ideal workday for workers It should be 21 hours a week, so that it can provide a better quality of life to your loved ones and relatives.
• There is also the proposal of 20 hours to 15 hours a week requested by activists from left-wing parties in European countries.

The Reduction of the working day It has its effects, especially on the attitude of the worker, which in turn affects productivity, since a happy worker with a positive attitude influences does his work efficiently which influences the productivity of the company.