The government-proposed regulation for part-time work has not gathered societal support. This conclusion has been reached from the analysis of the final report on the public consultation document which included the regime. Fifty-six percent of respondents surveyed disapproved of the proposal, the report from the Labor Affairs Bureau (DSAL) notes in its second chapter.
In the summary written by DSAL about the work to gather the opinions of different sectors of society, the report states that concerns surrounding the proposed regime are primarily centered around the belief that “the current Labor Law is enough to regulate on both the full-time and part-time work, not being needed a new regime just for the second one.” Additionally, the proposal “breaches the minimum conditions of the Labor Law and lacks consensus from the society.” Some of the surveyed also claimed the intention of the government “should be to incentivize the citizens to find a job, but, the design of the document under analysis does not protect the part-time workers, reducing the motivation of the people that had the intention to work part-time.”
Another opinion which focuses on the shortcomings of the regime said that the proposal claims, “the part-time work would provide the workers a more flexible working schedule based on their personal reasons and needs [but] the regime proposed does not show the possibility of this flexibility and has a negative impact on the working hours and on the salary of the part-time workers.”
Of the 44 percent of opinions expressed in favor of the regime’s establishment, around two-thirds of them were employers. The main ideas expressed in favor of the regime suggest that this “could release part of the human resources, which could help to smooth the lack of human resource departments in the small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs).”
Another opinion in support suggested its capability to, “solve existing [problems] regarding workers’ rights in companies that have both kinds of workers,” noting, “to apply to all the [general] Labor Law would create a big [financial] burden on the companies.”
A more general consensus in relation to part-time work has been achieved for the government’s proposal to classify part-time work as “a number of hours that does not exceed 72 hours in four weeks’ time, including the normal working time, overtime and work provided on days of weekly rest day and mandatory public holidays.”
This definition attracted a total of 75.3 percent of opinions in favor, from a total of 389 validated opinions expressed on the topic. Average citizens and employers were the primary respondents to this particular issue.
The critics of this definition stated that enforcing such a “tight” definition in terms of time might not lead to the wanted “flexibility.” Others called for the possibility of establishing a different number of hours according to seasonality (peak or off-peak seasons).
The report presented by the DSAL follows a public consultation period held for 45 days in between September 25 and November 8 last year. RM
General consensus over changes to Labor Relations Law
In the double public consultation held by the government regarding changes to be enforced to the Labor Relations Law, the seven proposed changes have gathered consensus from the public and several involved sectors, the Labor Affairs Bureau (DSAL) revealed in the final report of the public consultation over the law which was held last year. The report stated that six out of seven proposed changes had a majority of opinions in favor. Three of them had clear societal consensus: the addition of paid paternity leave (three to five days), the possibility of mothers to add to their regular maternity leave another 14 days of justified absence to work after the maternity leave period and the introduction of a regime to regulate the overlapping of the weekly rest day when this falls on a mandatory public holiday. Those proposals gathered 93.2, 91.9 and 86 percent of approval rate opinions respectively, giving way for their enforcement by the government in the law revision.
Three other measures which also attracted good approval rates were those related to “added flexibility in the compensation of work done during the mandatory public holidays,” which proposes that such compensation can be awarded within 90 days instead of the current 30; the “selection of the compensation regime” which allows compensation to be conducted in agreement with employees and employers in rest days as either extra payment, two rest days; and the “compensation regime that aims to balance the rights and interests of both employees and employers,” which proposed to add a new calculation method to determine the appropriate proportion of compensation in cases where the worker must be compensated for work on rest days or holidays, but due to personal matters had to totally or partially suspend work on those days.
The only proposal which did not convince the public sought to enforce a mechanism which allowed workers to select and exchange their work days across a number of public holidays. Some 63.9 percent of the people and organizations asked did not approve of the measure.
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