The four-day workweek project, now in Chile | Introduced in Congress

This Thursday, center-left deputies in the Chilean Congress introduced a bill proposing Reduce the work week to four days, in search of “changing the business model” and thus improving the physical and mental health of employees. The 4×3 formula seeks to reduce the working day to 40 hours a week at the beginning, and to 38 hours in the fifth year of its implementation.

The working day is currently 45 hours per week, after it was agreed in 2005 to reduce the working day by three hours from now on. An initiative has already been introduced in the legislature to reduce the working day to 40 hours, which Camila Vallejo signed.

“All studies show that it is not true that the more hours worked, the higher the productivity; on the contrary, the hours should be well distributed,” said PPD deputy Raul Soto. For the legislator, “the time has come to open a discussion about the possibility of a working day that would allow Chileans to work four days in a row and rest three days in a row.”

Soto explained that workers are scheduled to adapt their days to the four-by-three formula, so that they can perform tasks from Monday to Thursday and rest on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, or work from Tuesday to Friday, and have days off. Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays.

For his part, Chairman of the Labor Committee and co-author of the initiative MP Tocabel Jimenez, who is also from the People’s Democratic Party, highlighted the goal of “changing the model in which the country lives, regardless of the level of tension. Especially in these pandemic times.”

“What a project with these characteristics seeks is to improve mental health and family time. However, we are in no way seeking to lower productivity or lower wages,” the legislator added. “On the contrary, we suggest gradual implementation so that the economy does not suffer and adapt to this type of change,” he said.

Another signer on the project and a member of the Action Committee, socialist Gaston Saavedra, emphasized that the proposal “It improves the working and living conditions of the worker, and leads to greater commitment to work goals“.

The project has similarities with others that are being tested in different countries. At the beginning of this year, the government of Spain announced an initiative in the same direction and proposed funds to encourage companies to adopt this scheme, but it seems that the idea has spread until 2022. Meanwhile, Various New Zealand companiesand the United States and Japan uses a four-day week.