RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), working hours in member countries are equivalent, on average, to 40 hours per week. However, Colombia and Mexico have the highest legal maximums, with 48 hours per week.
Working weeks are also long in Chile, Israel, and Turkey, with hours above the OECD average.
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However, this year, a bill was approved to reduce the working day by six hours to 42 hours per week in Colombia, but it will be implemented gradually by 2026.
With this reduction, Colombia would drop to fourth place among the OECD countries with the most extended working hours, equating to Israel’s line.
Although Colombia would be below Chile in terms of weekly working hours, since the southern country has 45 working hours, the president-elect of that country, Gabriel Boric, has among his emblematic proposals to reduce the working day to 40 hours per week, as the OECD average.
According to the organization, 24 countries have working hours of 40 hours or less, such as Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. Australia and Belgium work 38 hours a week, and in France, it is 35 hours.
According to Diario Financiero, reducing the working day in Chile will also be applied gradually during Boric’s future government. It will also be implemented in a differentiated manner between economic sectors.
“The entry into force of this will be gradual (…), and a discussion that has to take place in the pre-legislative spaces is to start with productive sectors that are less labor-intensive”, said Javiera Martinez, member of Boric’s programmatic team, in a forum organized by Diario Financiero.