Chile will become the third country in Latin America to implement the 40-hour work week, after Ecuador and Venezuela. While in many European countries there has been a debate on reducing the working day to 35 hours for years, on the other side of the Atlantic working up to 48 hours a week is still the usual norm.
The law was approved by the Chilean Parliament on Tuesday and will be promulgated by leftist President Gabriel Boric on May 1, Labor Day.
However, the labor reduction will not fully come into effect until 2028, since the norm establishes that during the first year of the law, the week will go from 45 to 44 hours; 42 hours from the third year; and only 40 hours after the fifth year of validity of the new measure.
However, employers may anticipate the reduction if they request it and may also organize 10-hour work days, as long as the worker rests three days.
The measure has the support of the Chilean employers’ association, Confederation of Production and Commerce (CPC), and the country’s main union, the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), which during the negotiations focused on preventing the reduction of the day involved a drop in salary as the employers wanted. Minority unions opposed the wording of the law because they consider that it allows too much flexibility in its application.
In the political sphere, the consensus has been almost total, since the law was approved unanimously in March by the Senate and, on Tuesday, Congress validated it with 127 votes in favor, three abstentions and only 14 votes against.
The 40-hour work week is one of the first goals that Boric can score, who came to power a year ago with an ambitious progressive agenda that has been slowed down, in part, by the population’s rejection of the draft new Constitution in the referendum held last September.
The rejection of the constitutional project served to verify a certain cooling of the will of a majority of Chileans to introduce too radical changes, as had been interpreted with Boric’s victory.
The direct consequence of the rejection was the reformulation of a new constituent process where the conservative sectors will have more weight. And also that Boric was forced to introduce changes in his cabinet to admit socialist and bacheletista ministers, to the detriment of the most radical ones, within the framework of the government coalition between the leftist bloc Apruebo Dignidad and the social democratic group Socialismo Democrático.
After the approval of the law, Boric celebrated it with a message on Twitter. “Approved 40 hours! After many years adding support and dialogue, today we can finally celebrate the approval of this project that reduces the working day, a pro-family project that aims at the good living of all, “the president tweeted. “The mandate of our Government is to move towards greater justice and I have no doubt that improvements such as 40 hours are essential to get closer to a new Chile, a fairer one and a fuller life. We are moving forward!†added Boric.
The historic reduction in working hours occurs in one of the most liberal countries in the world. In fact, the new Constitution aims to correct the ultra-liberal economic model introduced by the Pinochet dictatorship in 1980 through a Magna Carta that is still in force.
The original bill was presented in 2017 by two communist deputies, Camila Vallejo and Karol Cariola, although it was blocked by the center-right during these years. Today the Communist Party is part of Boric’s government and Vallejo is its spokesperson.
