Chile approves the 40-hour week: how much work is being done in the rest of Latin America?

Chile’s congress on Tuesday approved reducing the weekly work week from 45 to 40 hours, making that country, along with Ecuador, the Latin American country with the shortest work week.

The proposal, which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies after unanimous approval in the Senate, gradually reduce hours a job within five years.

One year after application, the working day is reduced to 44 hours per week. After three years the limit will be 42 hours and after five years 40 hours, the working time recommended by the International Labor Organization (ILO).

The law provides for the possibility of work four days and rest three (unlike current legislation, which requires a minimum of five working days).

And consider the possibility of making it a maximum 5 additional hours per week (today you can do a maximum of 12 hours extra).

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Fabio Bertranou, director of the ILO regional office in Santiago, told BBC Mundo that the law is considering a special regime for sectors that require extraordinary working hours, such as mining or transport.

In these cases, employees are allowed to work shifts for a maximum of 52 hours per week, provided that they later have a larger number of days off as compensation.

“The law is considering the possibility that the 40 hours per week can be achieved averaging four weeks. So if you work a week more, the most important thing is that the average is 40″, he explained.

With this law, Chile becomes the second country in Latin America after Ecuador to adopt the working week recommended by the ILO.

This map shows what the labor legislation regulates in the rest of the region.

After this approval, Chile corresponds to most of the other 38 countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) where the 40-hour working week also applies.

The only exceptions are Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, where people work less than 40 hours, and Germany, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Turkey, where people work more.

How much work is being done in Chile today?

Although Chile’s current regulations allow working up to 45 hours per week – a shift that was 48 hours in 2005 – ILO statistics show that the average number of hours worked is much lower.

According to data from January 2023, workers were employed in Chile an average of 36.8 hours weekly.

As you can see below, this is one of the lowest averages in the region.

In fact, as you may have noticed, the average number of hours worked across Latin America is well below the legal limit.

If we make a global comparison, the average hours worked per week Latin America and the Caribbean (39.9 hours) it is significantly less than in the Arab countries (44.6 hours), those of Asia-Pacific (47.4 hours), East Asia (48.8 hours) and South Asia (49 hours).

Instead, it exceeds that of Western Europe (37.2 hours), North America (37.9) and Africa (38.8 hours) according to 2019 data compiled by the ILO.

Does this mean that little work is being done in Latin America, and Chile in particular?

“No”replies specialist Najati Ghosheh, who works at the ILO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

“What happens is that in some countries only time worked is measured in the formal sector and not in the marginal onewhere there are more workers who only get jobs by the hour, which lowers the average,” he explained to BBC Mundo.

According to Bertranou, the data provided by Chile also includes the informal sector, which is the 27% of the workers.

Of the total labor force, approx 45% work 45 hours a weekbut more than 40% work less than 35 hours.

While, 11% work above the maximum today legally allowed, with days of more than 49 hours per week.

Bertranou emphasized that the Chilean labor reform has come about thanks to “opening a space for dialogue with the business community” and that there was consensus among Chilean society on the importance of “freeing up time to have more family life and to enjoy the public space”.

According to the ILO, which adopted its 40-hour week convention in 1935, working more increases the number of occupational accidents and the health issuesbut it does not guarantee more productivity as there is more fatigue.

“Latin America has lagging legislation on working hours and it is imperative that a review is carried out,” Bertranou advised.