A four-day work week, could it work in Argentina?

As a result of the new ways of working brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, the possibility of shortening the working week became a topic of debate in many countries and Argentina was no exception. Currently, there are two ongoing projects that seek to reduce working hours: that of Claudia Ormaechea, deputy of the Front of All and leader of the Banking Association, and that of Hugo Yasky, also legislator of the government government and secretary general of the CTA.

While Ormaechea has a maximum working day of six hours and a maximum of 36 hours per week, Yasky proposes a working week with a maximum of eight hours a day and no more than 40 hours a week. In addition, it seeks the country to adopt a four-business day work week. “We believe that, at the present time, it is essential that Argentina legislatively enshrines the reduction of working hours with a view to the adoption of the principle of the forty-hour week provided for in Convention No. 47 of the International Labour Organization (ILO)”, says the project of the leader emerging from the sector teacher and the CTA.

The document states that the reduction of working hours would not affect the profitability of companies: “As economic theory as a whole states, from neoclassical liberal currents to John Maynard Keynes, the relationship between labor productivity and working time is inverse; even more so in the works of mechanical type. This implies that the more hours worked, the less product is obtained by each of them.”

According to Article 1 of Law 11544, the duration of work in Argentina may not exceed eight hours a day or 48 hours a week for any person employed by another person in public or private holdings, even if they are not for profit. Article 2 states: “The working day at night may not exceed seven hours, meaning that between 9 pm and 6 am. When work is to be carried out in unhealthy places where the vitiation of air or its compression, permanent toxic fumes or dusts endanger the health of the employed workers, the duration of the work shall not exceed six hours a day or 36 hours a week.”

For Matías Ghidini, a labor market specialist, talking about reducing working hours in Argentina is like a student who does not know how to add or subtract, being asked to solve a derivative function. “Argentina has much more basic duties in the world of work to solve than to be thinking about reduced working hours,” he said. Among them, he enumerated: “how to generate employment, how to have a labor framework attached to the work of the future or how to get workers out of informality”.

“Before talking about reduced working hours, many other more fundamental problems in the labour market would have to be solved,” the general manager of the consulting firm Ghidini Rodil told Infobae.

According to Ghidini, the reduction in working hours is based on an “already archaic” concept of the world of work, “which is that work is separate from personal life. That is to say, that you work at one time and at another time you are a person. That, especially during the pandemic, was shown to be impossible.” Personal life and work are merged and integrated, he said, “and one cannot separate the fact that at one point in his work schedule, he answers a personal message, asks for a medical appointment or does a personal procedure virtually any more than one can pretend that when he is in his free time he does not read a message about a work issue. That idea that it must be formally separated, seems to me to be delayed and that is not to understand the subject of the future”.

In turn, Luis María Cravino, director of the ITBA Advanced Certification in Organizational Development, first recalled that Argentine legislation on working time was created under the presidency of Hipolito Yrigoyen. “If we look at the current juncture, we must recognize that there are several issues around the world of work that could be changed, since the times and forms are not the same as decades ago,” he added.

The central debate, Cravino said, should consider whether to reduce the working day from eight to six hours or reduce the number of working days to about four days, generating a “new weekend” of three days. “Evaluating offering fewer working hours may be a successful proposition for companies that want to recruit new talent that values this type of flexibility more. Ultimately , working fewer hours or fewer days for the same salary could be one of the best benefits an employee could get,” he said.

Referring to the “work of the future”, Ghidini said that more and more work is being done for objectives and results. “The where and when are starting to be complementary; something greatly boosted by the pandemic, where we saw that the workplace doesn't matter; the important thing is that you do what you have to do.”

The previous paradigm was forcibly broken. “Talking about working hours strictly is an old way,” Ghidini said. “The application in Argentina of a reduced working week is an idea that will become increasingly obsolete, from the conceptual point of view and from the future of work. Argentina today has much deeper and more serious duties in the labor market than talking about it. It seems to me that this is not the time and that is not where I would start,” he said.

Impact on the economy

Regarding the economic impact that would result from the reduction of working hours in Argentina, Claudio Caprarulo, director of Analytica Consultora, highlighted that one of the major problems of the local economy is “heterogeneity, informality and the little dynamism of our labor market”.

According to the economist's view, the four-day working day may have some reason to be in sectors of high formality and high productivity. By case, services; where the work associated with objectives is more plausible. “In the rest it doesn't seem to be a viable option yet,” Caprarulo said, as long as the economy continues in a “situation of as much uncertainty and fragility as it is today.”

It is not proven whether working fewer hours increases labor costs, Carvino said. What does grow considerably, he said, is enthusiasm. According to him, “there is no doubt” that the world will have to consider more open scenarios, where there are as many employment contracts as there are people. In his view, the solution is to experiment and consider different options. “The best indicator that exists,” he explained, “is the data and information that we can get from the experiences we have tried.”

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), overwork results in losses of up to 3% of GDP. Lack of rest has a multiple impact: it decreases productivity, increases absenteeism and increases the risk of contracting diseases, among other consequences.

Ministry of Labour and trade unions

According to Beto Pianelli, secretary of occupational health of the CTA Nacional and secretary general of the Association of Subway and Premetro Workers (AGTSyP), it is necessary to reduce working hours to 32 or 35 hours, control unilateral time flexibility measures; eliminate moonlighting; encourage early retirement and retirement at age 60, vacation plans and sabbatical years, among other issues. “Reducing working time is a strategic issue for unions: to extend solidarity and as an alternative to layoffs, also to preserve their interlocutory role away from individual solutions,” he said in a 2021 document.

In dialogue with Infobae, sources from the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security of the Nation said that activities and sectors “necessarily adapt to needs. It happens in the auto parts of Córdoba, for example, who work with a four-day system; others opt for other types of shifts and others adapt current agreements to specific or seasonal needs,” they said.

“A general modification or regulation would be meaningless, because by making a general law you lose the wealth of the particular thing. On the part of the Ministry of Labour, there is no official response. The times when the minister (Claudio Moroni) was consulted he said that 'Argentina is the kingdom of the heterogeneous'. It doesn't make sense that it's something general,” they concluded.

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