Reduced working hours: when does it start and how can you benefit? - Personal Finance

Reduced working hours: when does it start and how can you benefit? – Personal Finance – Economics

Mitchell G. Patton3 years ago

On July 15, the reduction of the weekly working day will be implemented, stipulated in Law 2101 of 2021.

(Also read: Batteries: reduction of working hours in Colombia has several exceptions, which ones?).

This project, approved by Congress two years ago, seeks that the maximum duration of the work day be 42 hours per week and not 48, as it currently works.

Starting in 2021, the change is expected to be implemented gradually by employers. For 2023, for example, the reduction of one hour of the day (47 hours) is contemplated, the same as in 2024 (46 hours).

Four years after the entry into force of the law, by July 15, 2025, two additional hours will be reduced from the working day (44 hours) and, one year later, two more will be subtracted. In this way, the workers will culminate in 2026 with a weekly time of 42 hours.

(Keep reading: The advice of the president of Bancolombia to do well at work).

In Colombia, the working day is 48 hours. This will change as of July 15 for some workers.

The progressive reduction does not bring about changes in the salary or benefits of employees. Along these lines, it does not exempt workers from fulfilling their obligations or functions during their workday.

What this bill does allow is that the subjects involved in the labor process (employer and worker) distribute working time over five or six days a week and guarantee at least one mandatory rest day. With, of course, a few exceptions.

“The number of hours of daily work may be distributed in a variable manner during the respective week, having a minimum of four continuous hours and a maximum of up to nine hours a day without any surcharge for supplementary work”, details Law 2101 of 2021.

(Of interest: Subsidy for the unemployed 2023: find out how you can apply for this incentive).

Colombians will work fewer hours per week.

One of the great concerns within the political and academic sphere is that, with the implementation of this new reduction, productivity in organizations is affected, as is their ability to innovate and compete in the market. Faced with this, there are many experts who highlight the success stories throughout the world.

In Germany, for example, the reduction in the working day brought more spaces for workers to carry out their tasks and personal care, This is indicated by Iván Jaramillo, from the Labor Observatory of the Universidad del Rosario, for ‘Forbes’.

“A public policy to reconcile work and family life is also part of a constitutional strategy that seeks to balance the field in domestic responsibilities, which arises to a greater extent to women,” the previously cited magazine points out about Jaramillo’s statements.

For Stefano Farné, director of the Labor Observatory of the Externado de Colombia University, this change in the working day does not imply a decrease in the standard of living of workers, according to ‘Forbes’, and it is not in vain that the International Labor Organization supports reducing up to 40 hours.