The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, defended this Wednesday (05/01/2024), on the occasion of International Labor Day, the reduction in the working day that began to be applied in the country and said that “you don’t live to work, you work to live”.
“One of the problems we have in Chile is that we lack social cohesion and for there to be more social cohesion, time is required,” said the president at an event at the Worker’s Hospitalin Santiago, and added that “the right of people to share must be put at the center, that one does not live to work, one works to live.”
In the last week of April, the first stage of the law that reduces the working day from 45 to 40 hours began to be applied, an initiative approved in 2023 in Parliament and that makes Chile the second country in the region – after Ecuador – to set the working day at 40 hours per week.
The measure will be adapted gradually over a maximum period of up to five years, so it will be fully applied by 2029: those who work will go from a 45 to 44 hour day in the first year of publication of the law, 42 in the third year and 40 to the fifth.
“Having one more hour a week to share and in the near future 4 more hours a week to be able to share with the family, go out to the park, recover public spaces (…) is also tremendously important in the type of society that we built,” Boric stressed.
The reduction of the working day – Boric added – “is not only an economic debate, it is the social cohesion that we need to be able to build a better country.”
Contrary to what was forecast, Chile avoided contraction in 2023 and closed with a growth of 0.2%. The Chilean Central Bank raised its forecast for 2024, setting it in a range of between 2% and 3%.
ama (efe, cooperative)
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