Gradually reduce the maximum weekly working day to 32 hours by 2032, set a single interruption and that it does not exceed one hour on the part of the working day, extend the mandatory weekly rest to two days and that those who work in shifts cannot work more than five nights in a row are some of the measures that experts from the Time Use Initiative (TUI) want the European Union to regulate as a community directive to guarantee all Europeans a more balanced organization of working time, regardless of whether they live in the country that live
This is contained in the document of public policy recommendations that international and local experts in the organization of working time presented and debated yesterday as part of Time Use Week 2023, which is being celebrated these days in Barcelona.
"The proposal is the result of the reflection carried out for some time by the Time Use Initiative, a non-profit organization that wants to put the right to time on the political agenda and that has already drawn up for the Ministry of Labor a report with more than 100 proposals that was to serve as the basis for the future Spanish time use law", explains Ariadna Güell, TUI co-ordinator, to La Vanguardia.
They have now decided to transmit some of these measures to the competent bodies of the European Union to adapt the corresponding directives and to force the governments of all countries to advance in this field and offer a harmonized framework of rights and duties for all European workers .
The first measure of the document, which was presented yesterday by Mari Luz Vega, a former official of the OIT and one of the authors, is the reduction of working time. It is proposed to gradually lower the maximum working day. The first step would be to set a limit of 37.5 hours per week for all business sectors in 2026 and, from there, gradually reduce it until it reaches 32 hours in 2032. "This would make it possible to homogenize what is already it is a reality in the average hours worked in Europe, although in the labor legislation of many of the member states the working day continues to be 38 and 40 hours", indicate the TUI experts.
Another of the proposed reforms is aimed at avoiding unpredictable and improvised days. Specifically, it is requested that companies be obliged to inform workers about the minimum number of guaranteed working hours, the time and days that the employee may need to work, the regulation of overtime, the time minimum notice to notify the worker when there are changes to the schedule... The goal is for the employee to have more clarity about working time and to be able to plan their life better, even if the working day is variable.
TUI experts - who have drawn up the document with input from labor law specialists Anna Ginés (Esade), Raquel Serrano (UB) and Mari Luz Vega (UCM) - believe that the European authorities should also limit the breaks of the working day so that work does not end up colonizing people's entire schedule. They propose that there can only be a single interruption in the working days, and never for more than an hour, a change that would clearly affect Spain, where the lunch break in many workplaces is long and means that it ends later of working very late.
Other proposed measures are to extend the weekly rest to two days for all sectors, that employees on rotating shifts cannot work more than five consecutive nights, that those over 50 who work at night have the right to request the change to a day job, make the options for reductions in working hours flexible so that they can be discontinuous throughout the week, month or year, or that they can ask to take care of people they live with even if there is no relationship of kinship
