The Minister of Labor and Social Welfare, Jeannette Jara, and the national director of Labor, Pablo Zenteno, announced the scope of opinion 235/08 of the Labor Directorate that addresses the possibility that employers and workers do not reach an agreement regarding to the application of the reduction in hours and specifies the proportionality in the reduction of the working day, contemplated in the 40 Hours law and whose implementation comes into force in the coming days.
In this situation, the statement states that “in the case of a day from Monday to Friday, from April 26, 2024 to April 25, 2026, the employer must reduce the daily work day by at least one hour in one of the 5 days that are part of the weekly working day.” While the law is in full force, in 2028, the employer must reduce the working day by at least one hour each day, if its workers work five days a week.
Likewise, in the case of a six-day workday, from Monday to Saturday, the opinion maintains that “the employer must reduce at least 50 minutes in one daily shift and the fraction of 10 minutes in another, in one of the 6 days that are part of the weekly schedule.”
In this regard, Minister Jeannette Jara explained that the 40 Hour Law “is deeply felt and demanded by citizens. It was built based on a tripartite agreement between employers, workers and the government. And today, before its implementation begins on April 26, we have detected queries, concerns and complaints about how some would be thinking about implementing it through daily minutes. That is what this opinion of the Labor Directorate establishes and circumscribes.”
“It has to do with something very essential, which is why we want this law and how we should honor the agreement we reached. For this reason, both employers, workers and the government, at the time of implementation starting on April 26, must be aware of how this change is occurring in companies,” he added.
Meanwhile, the director of Labor stated that the opinion “clarifies the specific formula that the employer must use to adjust the daily work day, with the purpose of obtaining its weekly reduction in the event of no agreement with the workers. workers or union organizations by virtue of the provisions of articles 1 and 3 transitory of Law 21,561, which establish a rule of graduality and proportionality respectively in the terms of this report.
The 40-hour law establishes a gradual decrease in working hours, so that, after this year’s first reduction to 44 hours, in April 2026 42 hours will be reached. In the same month of 2028, the law will fully enter into force, when the 40 hours of work per week are implemented.
Finally, the Seremi of Labor and Social Welfare, Jaime Chamorro, stressed that “the spirit of the law calls on employers and workers to reach an agreement, to determine how to distribute the reduction in working hours. Therefore, we value this statement by the Labor Directorate regarding a law whose purpose is to translate into longer effective rest times and a better quality of life for all workers in the region. Notwithstanding this, nothing prevents the parties themselves from being able to advance the moment in which the reduction should occur; That is, they can agree, from now on, to reduce it to 40 hours, voluntarily and without waiting for gradualness.”
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