House bill bars employers from making non-urgent calls, messages during workers’ rest hours
FILE This illustration photo shows a person working on their laptop from a home office. (Photo by Chris DELMAS / AFP)
MANILA, Philippines — A bill prohibiting employers and supervisors from giving non-urgent work-related calls and messages to their employees during rest hours has been filed in the House of Representatives.
Under House Bill No. 10717 or the “Workers’ Rest Law” filed by Calamba City Rep. Joaquin Chipeco Jr., unless given consent by their employee, an employer, manager, supervisor is prohibited from doing the following during rest hours:
- Requiring the employee to work;
- Requiring the employee to be on duty, to travel, or be at a prescribed place for work or work-related activities, such as attending seminars, meetings, team-building and other similar activities; and,
- Contacting the employee for work and work-related purposes through e-mail, phone, message, and other means of communications, unless it is for the purpose of notifying the employee of necessity of rendering emergency or urgent work
The bill defines “rest hours” as “any period other than the hours of work.”
Violators shall pay the employee P1,000 per hour of work rendered, or a fraction thereof.
“Studies therefore have shown that under the ‘new normal,’ many workers, particularly those who are on a work-from-home arrangement basis end up rendering work beyond the maximum hours of work provided under the law. This emerging trend does not augur well for mental health of the employees, not to mention family solidarity,” Chipeco said in the bill’s explanatory note.
“While acknowledging certain exceptions based on the nature of work and tasks deemed emergency or as urgent, this bill seeks to uphold the letter and the spirit of our labor laws, which is to respect mandated rest hours for our workers and prohibit the various forms of abuses in that connection,” he added.
The measure is a counterpart bill of Senator Francis Tolentino’s Senate Bill No. 2475.
