Mr. Le Van Giap, a worker in Nam Thang Long Industrial Park ( Hanoi ), thinks that reducing working hours to less than 48/week is reasonable, because human health is limited and needs time to rest to regenerate labor.

"Reducing working hours to increase productivity is better than working a lot but making workers tired and inefficient," said Mr. Giap.

Sharing the same opinion, Mr. Nguyen Van Quang, a worker in Que Vo Industrial Park (Bac Ninh), said that reducing working hours is a progressive trend in the world .

In reality, many places have low productivity on Saturdays as workers only work to get by. Therefore, instead of requiring workers to work on Saturdays, workers should be given time off to have more positive energy and work more effectively in the new week.

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Illustration photo. Photo: Le Anh Dung

Ms. Le Thi Mai, a petrochemical engineer at a Japanese company in Hanoi, believes that reducing working hours should not be considered a way to increase wages for employees. Reducing working hours is also a way to save costs for businesses. Because, often, people go to work on weekends just to cope, making productivity low, while businesses have to increase electricity and water costs... more expensive.

Towards a roadmap to reduce working hours

Mr. Pham Minh Huan, former Deputy Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, said that the proposal to reduce working hours is not new. Many parties have proposed it before, but it has not been considered yet.

According to Mr. Huan, to reduce working hours, it is necessary to gradually prepare conditions such as: improving labor productivity, raising salary levels and labor income.

Currently, the salary and wages in our country are basically paid by enterprises based on working time. In the context of low labor productivity and low income, working hours must still be extended. If working hours are reduced further, workers' income will decrease accordingly.

Moreover, after the Covid-19 pandemic, domestic enterprises are being strongly affected by the global economic recession, orders are being cut and workers are falling into unemployment.

From the above analysis, Mr. Huan believes that we must wait until the economy stabilizes, around 2030, before we can consider a policy of reducing working hours.

A labor expert said that it is difficult to immediately reduce working hours for workers to less than 48 hours/week at the present time, so it is possible to reduce it by only going to work on Saturday mornings, and on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, workers are off to take care of themselves and their families.

This policy may not be widely applied yet, but can be piloted in a number of suitable industries and occupations.