Labour Ministry Mulling To Permit Four-Day Work Week With12-Hours Shift If Workers Consent

The Union Ministry of Labour and Employment is working on new labour codes that propose to permit companies to allow for four-day work weeks, Business Insider reports.

However, the three-day weekends will come along with 48 working hours per week, which comes down to an employee working for 12 hours a day.

Reportedly, a 2020 survey revealed that employees believed that implementation of a four-day work week was around five years away in India. It also noted that Indians were made to work even more than five days a week on many occasions.

Apurva Chandra, Secretary of the Labour and Employment Ministry, said, “Companies will have to give three days’ of paid leaves and 12 hours of work per day to their employees with the consent of the workers. We are not forcing employees or employers. It gives flexibility. It’s an enabling provision in sync with the changing work culture. We have tried to make some changes. We have tried to give flexibility in working days.”

The International Labour Organization mandates that the general standard should be of employees working 48 regular hours per week, with a maximum of eight hours a day. The draft rules of the new labour codes are being prepared by the government. It has emerged the codes apply a new provision to give free medical check-ups to workers via the Employees State Insurance Corporation.

Microsoft’s Japan office had implemented this rule in 2019 and the results were very promising. Apparently, productivity shot up by 40 per cent in four-day work weeks and paper printing along with consumption of electricity went down too.

One of the surveys conducted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on businesses showed that companies can save around 2 per cent of their total turnover by implementing these methods.

However, it also raised concerns that four-day work weeks could possibly not fulfill the expectations and demands of the consumers, especially in the services sector.