Chile: Workday, salary and free time. Your prospects and ours.
It has opened the debate against the working day after the labor reform proposal that seeks to impose the government. In turn, the idea of legislating the reduction of working hours is activated 45 a 40 weekly hour. All this amid a controversy where entrepreneurs, Congress and the Government express their views, although institutional levels much of the debate is on economic growth and productivity, welfare positions make them disappear, the right to free time and actual working conditions in our country.
What the government wants
These days the government began a media campaign to propagandize its proposal for labor flexibility, arguing social integration into the labor sectors and compensation to family life, in the words of Piñera: "The workday is divided into very rigidly by law, It can be distributed only between 5 Y 6 days and full of rules, in circumstances that modernity is precisely what you want to do more compatible the world of work with the world family; and thus labor flexibility, one can accommodate the schedules (…) It should be allowed to the extent that free and voluntary agreements are achieved between the parties, which stiffens the current legislation in extreme form ".
For this include integrating the Labor Code the possibility of distribution 180 monthly hours to 12 Daily hours, therefore this "improvement" allows the elimination of holidays and the relative stability of the conference to be applied. An intensification of work rhythms without talking about salary increase. Another issue that includes the elimination of compensation for years of service, justified as a measure to encourage new job opportunities, because if there workers compensation company do not change. Absurd.
Labor Reform (It proposed a series of measures more) It is a central axis of government, like the pension and tax, It is part of the route proposed in the middle of a cycle devaluativo the global economy and local economic stagnation, therefore symptomatic of the trend in operating relax rules intended to regain profitability of big business.
The dilemma of the parliamentary opposition
parallel, a couple of years ago the deputy of the Communist Party, Camila Vallejos, He raised the idea of legislating reducing the working day 45 a 40, arguing that developed countries has remained productivity while reduced working time. This idea emerged again supported by the Frente Amplio in the middle of the discussion of labor reform, a proposal that aims to be cross in parliament building on the example of the Government of Lagos which decreased from 48 a 45 without salary reduction nor productivity of enterprises.
In fact it would mean working 8 Daily hours 5 Days of the week, Against this entrepreneurship lent his voice to oppose and UDI by Patricio Melero tried to censure the President of the Labor Commission, Gael Yeomans (Social Convergence - Frente Amplio). Therefore the right and entrepreneurship will raise all the pitfalls in their favor, parliament being a place where they feel comfortable.
Dilemma that crosses the PC and the FA, as through institutional dialogue involving government sectors. the PC, who was promoter of the idea he directs the CUT, absent in each work and silent conflict with the labor reform, while the FA priority agreements in parliament, simile position between the two sectors that promote ideas without motorize mobilization, on the eve of a new electoral scenario.
Cast working hours, reduced hours and time to live.
So far the equation is "live to work", still declining 40 Weekly hours we would still among the countries with larger conferences, not counting the hours of transfer and housework. For our part we believe that the right to decent work is basic, as an income that is equal to the actual cost of living.
Although they are basic rights, any changes in favor of the workers means touching the interests of the capitalists, leading a confrontation and antagonistic dispute. A utopian scenario would think that entrepreneurs and their representatives agree to reduce their surplus, If these were possible passivity of the PC and the FA would be justified, although this has not happened, Unlike, It has allowed the advance of precarious work measures.
So, our proposal is tantamount to transforming the "live to work" to "work to live", salary equivalent to what it takes, while distributing the work among all workers and all as a measure against unemployment and full employment: reduce 6 Daily hours, 5 Days of the week. In addition to socially us to take care of reproductive work and care to socialize, all this for free time available to individual and social. Rights of majorities that capitalism makes it impossible to impose.
All this diagram of our proposal for basic and elementary aspirations is possible in the democratic activity of the workers making public the production planning, thus playing all the interests of the capitalists and confronting Uncompromising, background with revolutionary thinking organization that provided new horizons: anticapitalist, feminist and democratic, That's why we built a tool that is available to all of this and more as prospects for a new society.
Ivan M., anticapitalist movement
