Mr. Le Van Giap, a worker in Nam Thang Long Industrial Park (Hanoi), said that reducing working hours to less than 48/week is reasonable, because human health is limited and needs time to rest to restore 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 view, 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 fact, in many places, labor productivity on Saturdays is not really high when workers only work to cope. Therefore, instead of requiring workers to work on Saturdays, we should let workers rest to have more positive energy, and start the new week working more effectively.

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Illustration photo. Photo: Le Anh Dung

Ms. Le Thi Mai, a petrochemical engineer at a Japanese company in Hanoi, said that we should not think of reducing working hours as a way to increase wages for employees. Reducing working hours is also a way to save costs for businesses. Because, often, people working on weekends is just a way to cope, working for the sake of it, so productivity is not high, while businesses have to increase electricity and water costs... which are 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 so far it has not been considered.

According to Mr. Huan, to reduce working hours, it is necessary to gradually prepare conditions such as: improving labor productivity, raising the salary level 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 further reduced, workers' income will decrease accordingly.

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

From the above analysis, Mr. Huan believes that we must wait until the economy is stable, 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.