Chile's move to a 40 hour work week
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We look at the implications as the Latin American country gradually reduces from 45 hours.
In April 2023 politicians approved a law in congress saying that businesses need to move towards cutting their hours to help get a better work life balance for employees.
This reduction is happening gradually, and the working week is getting shorter by at least one hour per year, over a maximum of five years.
We speak to workers and businesses in Chile about the impact - good and bad - that this is having.
Presenter: Jane Chambers Technical production: Matthew Dempsey
(Image: A group of workers on lunchbreak in Santiago. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Global Story, with smart takes and fresh perspectives on one big news story, every Monday to Friday from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:11.5 | Search for The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts, to find out more. |
| 0:20.0 | Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Jane Chambers. Today is the Latin American |
| 0:26.9 | country Chile ready to move from a 45-hour week to a 40-hour week. In April 20-23, Chilean politicians |
| 0:35.3 | approved a law in Congress, saying that businesses need to move towards cutting their hours to help get a better work-life balance for employees. |
| 0:44.2 | We all know that we work so many hours, sometimes Saturday, sometimes Sunday, holidays, even vacations. |
| 0:52.9 | That's the aim of the change of the law, right? It's to make this balance. |
| 0:56.5 | We need to make sure that our employees, at the end, they're going to be happier, more productive, |
| 1:03.4 | more efficient if they really work the amount of hours they should and they make this balance |
| 1:09.8 | with their private life. |
| 1:11.2 | Businesses have some flexibility about their time frame for getting down to 40 hours a week. |
| 1:16.3 | The thing is that it's a progressive decreasing of the hours, right? |
| 1:20.5 | Your company, you can choose whether you decrease five hours now or you can decrease one hour per year or you can come up with any |
| 1:29.8 | system you like but the only thing you need is that every year you have to be one hour less than |
| 1:37.3 | the previous year. The deadline to get to 44 hours is April this year and then they have until |
| 1:42.7 | 2028 to get to 40 hours a week. We hear from |
| 1:46.4 | experts, business owners and employees about what the new law means for them. President Gabriel |
| 1:52.0 | Bollage took office in 2022 and pledged to make social and economic reforms like moving to a 40-hour |
| 1:58.5 | week to help improve Tillian's quality of life and conditions for workers. |
| 2:03.1 | But will this law help or harm this Latin American country's economy? That's all coming up on |
| 2:08.4 | today's Business Daily. In 2023, Chile's GDP was just under $600 billion, an economist are cautiously optimistic it will grow in 2024. |
| 2:23.1 | But many business owners are worried about their finances and think the new bill moving towards a 40-hour week will cause more problems for them. |
... |
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