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On average, Mexicans work 2,137 hours a year, according to a study carried out in 2019 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
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According to the WHO, working more than 55 hours a week increases the risk of having a stroke by 35 percent.
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The countries in which the most work is done is Costa Rica with 2,060 hours per year, South Korea with 1,967 hours per year and Russia with 1,965 hours per year, according to information from the OECD.
In the Senate of the Republic a new labor reform will be discussed, this seeks that Mexican workers improve their performance thanks to a reduction in hours in the working day. There are currently 8 initiatives in the Senate and in the Chamber of Deputies in which the reduction of working hours is proposed. In addition to this, a reduction in the hours of the night work shift is also sought, leaving work nights of 5 hours, while the days that exceed these hours will have to be paid with 100 percent more than the remuneration set in the service. Ordinary.
What would the new working hours proposed by this initiative be like?
The reduction in working hours would go from eight to six hours a day, although if this first point is not approved, a second alternative would be discussed. a 4-day workday (Monday to Thursday) and 3 days off. These initiatives will be discussed next Thursday April 20 in a forum in which members of the Labor Commission of the Senate of the Republic will participate. Let us remember that the “Vacaciones Dignas” reform was recently approved, with which vacations were increased to 12 days in the first year worked.
On the other hand, recently The Chilean Congress approved the reduction of the working day from 45 to 40 weekly hours, a law that will be applied progressively over the next five years. But if we compare this country with Mexico we have completely opposite figures, for example, the population in Chile is 19.49 million while its economy ranks 45th. However, Mexico is among the countries with the largest population in the world, at have a population of 126.7 million, with an economy that ranks number 15 thanks to the fact that Mexico’s GDP grew by 3.1 percent in 2022.
In contrast to European countries just beginning to test reduced days in the workweek, we have the UK, which experimented with four-day workweeks for six months, finding that productivity increased. Although if we go back to the year 2000 we can remember that France was one of the most questioned countries when in that year reduced the weekly working day to 35 hours with 30 days of vacation per year. In this country, studies attribute the creation of jobs as a consequence of the reduction in working hours, suggesting that a reduction in the working week leads to more employment because more workers are needed to cover the hours.
These initiatives finally compare Mexico with countries like France and the United Kingdom that have totally different conditions in terms of population and economy. While it remains to be seen what will happen to Chile after giving the green light to this measure. Will it be possible for the industrial sector and transnational companies in Mexico to accept a reduction in the working week?
