Contributing opinions to the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Labor Code, the Law on Archives, the Law on Gender Equality and the Law on Red Cross Activities built by the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Department of Home Affairs of Son La province proposed to study amending regulations on the roadmap to reduce normal working hours for private sector workers to 40 - 44 hours/week, in agreement with the public sector.
Talking to Lao Dong Newspaper, Dr. Nhac Phan Linh - Deputy Director of the Institute of Strategy and Policy of the Fatherland Front, Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee - said that reducing working hours helps workers have more time to regenerate health, take care of their families, reduce stress and improve the quality of life. This is also one of the important factors contributing to improving labor productivity.
According to Dr. Nhac Phan Linh, when standard working hours decrease, both workers and businesses need to change in a positive direction.
Workers need to work diligently, focused, efficiently and improve productivity. Meanwhile, businesses need to invest in science, technology, automation and improve production processes, instead of continuing to rely on the advantage of cheap labor with simple machinery and technology.
However, in reality, many businesses, especially in the processing and labor-intensive industries, do not have much motivation to innovate technology, because extending overtime is still an easy solution to implement and less costly than investing in machinery and technology.
Vietnam's goal should not be to increase overtime hours, but to increase income from official working hours. Currently, with an income of about 8 - 10 million VND/month, many workers only temporarily have enough to spend on basic living needs, without savings to prepare for illness and disease" - he shared.
Therefore, it is necessary to continue to adjust the minimum wage, raise the basic wage level at enterprises and gradually include support items such as gasoline, communication, and childcare that are being paid by many businesses into official salaries.
According to him, salaries from normal working hours must ensure the basic living standards of workers, accounting for at least 75 - 80% of the income structure. Overtime should only be an additional income when both workers and employers have needs, both aiming to increase income and profit.
We need to periodically increase the regional minimum wage, increase the basic wage, towards the goal of achieving a living wage in the next 5-10 years" - Dr. Nhac Phan Linh proposed.
To prevent the process of reducing working hours from creating too much pressure on businesses, Dr. Nhac Phan Linh proposed that the State have support policies such as tax incentives and credit support for businesses investing in science, technology and artificial intelligence (AI). At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen links between businesses and training institutions to build a skilled and skilled labor force.
Reducing working hours does not mean reducing business profits. On the contrary, this can become a driving force to promote businesses to improve productivity, improve working conditions and increase competitiveness. This is also the path for Vietnam to improve the quality of human resources, instead of continuing to rely on the growth model based on cheap labor" - Dr. Nhac Phan Linh affirmed.
