Work less, pay more

With the P20 minimum wage increase for Central Visayas about to kick in, labor  and management have a few issues to wrangle with other than the proposed four-day work week bill pending in Congress.

The Four-Day Work Week Act of 2011 proposed by Quezon City Rep. Winston Castelo will have workers in the private and public sector work an additional two hours on their eight-hour workday in order to get a three-day break starting  Friday.

The thought of a four-day work week didn’t   sit well with  companies that noted that the country already has enough holidays—all paid, we presume—that productivity will be further compromised with additional rest days.

As stated by the Exporters Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP), the country has 21 holidays, excluding local holidays in each town, city and province compared to the five and 12 of first world countries.

ECOP president Ed Lacson reasoned that the extra hours would amount to a rest period for the workers, who are more accustomed to an eight-hour workday, rather than a 10-hour work schedule.

We have yet to hear organized  labor groups say their piece.

It  would be advisable to conduct a  survey to reflect sentiments of  both workers and management.

The four-day work week is not an isolated proposal.  In Utah, the state government canceled a four-day work week experiment stating that it resulted in less productivity and lesser profit among companies.

This isn’t to say that the four-day work week is worthless.

In some other counties, the four-day work week did benefit the  local government and private sector, leading to one analysis that the scheme  is more practical on the local level rather than the regional or national level.

This proposal will be a tough sell in the Philippines, where five and even six-day work schedules have been the tradition for decades.

The Chinese-Filipino work ethic is so ingrained in many factories and even five-star resorts, that working beyond eight hours a day and during weekends is considered normal. A contrast can be seen in American-owned firms, where taking off on Friday and disconnecting with the office at 5 p.m. is the norm.

A  four-day work week may not be an ideal setup for companies out  to earn more profit but it’s a bonanza for workers, who could  spend more time with families, a fact that Castelo is counting on.  He said  workers will spend more pesos for traveling and leisure time, thus boosting domestic tourism.

Instead of scrapping the bill, maybe employers and workers can explore it further and other ways to stretch time  ad productivity. Doing so may be beneficial to both sides in the long term.