Palace asked to consider four-day work week

House Minority Leader, Manila 6th district Rep. Benny Abante has called Malacañang to study the implementation of a four-day work week even as related bills on the proposal began to gain traction in the House of Representatives.

"There is no harm in trying, because at this point, we should explore all possibilities to help address our traffic woes," Abante said in a press conference Wednesday afternoon, alluding to the perennial traffic that typically worsens during the holiday months of November and December.

The pastor-congressman's appeal for a shortened work week involves non-frontline offices of national government agencies.

"In the past, the CSC (Civil Service Commission) has issued guidelines for its adoption – but rather than make it optional, I suggest that the Palace consider the feasibility of doing this during the holiday season. This could also serve as a trial period to assess if such a scheme can work long-term," noted Abante.

He said that Microsoft Corporation recently experimented with a four-day work week in one of its subsidiaries in Japan. The result was a 40 percent increase in productivity.

"If it worked there, it could work here," Abante said. "We have an enormous problem and we need to consider drastic measures to address it."

In a public hearing of the House Committee on Labor and Employment that morning, chairman and 1-PACMAN Party-list Rep. Enrico Pineda scheduled House Bill (HB) No. 1670 authored by Deputy Speaker and Camarines Sur 2nd LRay Villafuerte, and HB No. 1904 authored by Baguio City lone district Rep. Mark Go for technical working group (TWG) discussion next week.

Villafuerte's measure seeks to amend Article 83 of Presidential Decree (PD) 442, otherwise known as the Labor Code of the Philippines, as amended (by removing the limit of normal work hours to a more flexible work duration); while Go's bill seeks to increase the normal work hours per day under a compressed work week scheme, amending Articles 83, 87 and 91 of the Labor Code.

"I think both these bills are worthwhile looking into and I would recommend Congressman Go to discuss the matter with the other author, Deputy Speaker Villafuerte, on how we can consolidate this," Pineda told Go, who was the only author present during the hearing.

A normal work week involves five days of eight hours each, which amounts to 40 hours. A shortened work week could result to 10 or even 12-hour work days in order to reach the total work output of a normal week.

"As stated in both bills, this is not compulsory, this is voluntary, and I think it has its good points," reckoned Pineda.

"As mentioned by the other resource persons, they have other concerns too. And I would say the concerns are more on work that are labor-intensive where extended work hours might impede their performance. But in other cases like working inside the office, not doing a lot of physical work, I think extended work hours are more than welcome," said the panel chairman.

Go said his intention in filing the bill was to have a win-win situation between workers and the employers.

"Kasi ang nakikita ang relasyon ng labor and management, adversarial eh. Hindi dapat ganun. Ito pong desensyo nitong bill nato is to have a bill that will really protect both the labor and the management (The relationship between labor and management that we see is adversarial. It shouldn't be like that. The design of this bill is to have a bill that will really protect both the labor and the management),” he said.