This is a proposal worth considering, because after many years of development, it is time for the story of the competitiveness of the economy not to be seen only through the number of hours workers are present at work.
Currently, employees in the administrative and public service sectors commonly work 40 hours a week, while the normal working hours of employees in enterprises can be up to 48 hours.
The 8-hour interval per week seems not much, but combined in a year is hundreds of hours.
That is a very large amount of time for workers to spend on resting, family, studying, taking care of children and other needs of life.
Therefore, reducing working hours is primarily to improve the quality of life of tens of millions of workers.
But reducing working hours is not simply reducing a few hours in a work week.
The more difficult problem is how to make workers work fewer hours but income does not decrease, while businesses still maintain output, efficiency and competitiveness.
This is especially important when in reality many workers still have to rely on overtime pay to improve their income.
If working hours are reduced but wages are also reduced accordingly, policies aimed at improving living standards may create additional pressure for workers.
Therefore, reducing working hours must go hand in hand with increasing labor productivity, with roadmaps, transitional periods, initially 44 hours and then gradually towards 40 hours, with methods suitable for each industry and business conditions.
And this can also be seen as an opportunity to create positive pressure for businesses to innovate operations.
When they cannot continue to rely on extending working hours, businesses will have to invest more in technology, automation, skills training and improving production organization.
A job that used to take 48 hours to complete, if thanks to better technology and management, can be completed in 44 hours, then 40 hours, then both businesses and employees benefit.
That is the development direction to be pursued because our economy cannot continue to compete with cheap labor and long working hours.
As living standards increase, wages increase and the advantage of cheap labor gradually shrinks, the value of the economy must be created more from productivity, skills, technology and quality of human resources.
Reducing working hours does not mean working less, but rather that each working hour creates more value, so that when productivity increases enough for workers to reduce working hours while still maintaining income, they have more time for family, rest, study, shopping, travel and entertainment.
That time fund of workers can also create additional demand for trade, services and consumption, thereby continuing to contribute to the economy.
