This Friday, April 26, the application of the 40-hour Law begins, a regulation whose main objective is to ensure that by 2028 no working day exceeds 40 hours per week, as opposed to the 45 hours currently established.
This change will be implemented gradually, with a reduction of one hour per year. The first will come into force this coming Friday, bringing the working day to 44 hours per week.
This is how it will be applied
The Minister of Labor, Jeannette Jara, defined that the reduced weekly hour must be applied compulsorily on a full day with one hour less, rejecting the possibility of distributing that time in 12 minutes less each business day. In addition, she stressed that this legislation does not affect lunch time and that any violation of this time slot will be sanctioned.
“The law has a clear objective and that is to have more time. And, therefore, it is not worth creating different types of figures that what they do is deduct time, on the one hand, and add time on the other,” said the Secretary of State.
Based on the above, if it is a day from Monday to Friday, the employer must reduce the daily work day by at least one hour in one of the five days that are part of the weekly work day.
In the case of a six-day weekly shift, from Monday to Saturday, it is specified that “the employer must reduce at least 50 minutes in one daily shift and a fraction of 10 minutes in another, in one of the six days that are part of the work.” of the weekly working day,” reads the opinion issued by the Ministry of Labor.
The Seremi of Labor in Ñuble, Eduardo Riquelme, emphasized that, “this decrease cannot imply a reduction in the worker’s remuneration.” The authority explained that, “if there are companies that have doubts regarding their schedule adjustment plan, they can present the proposal to the Regional Directorate of Labor, which will decide whether or not it complies with what is required by the law and the opinions issued.”
Asked regarding the sanctions in case of non-compliance, Riquelme asserted that “employers who do not reduce the maximum working day, starting on April 27, may be sanctioned with fines ranging from 3 to 60 UTM ($194,379 to $3,887,580). ), depending on the number of workers in the company”, detailing that the Labor Directorate will be in charge of supervising compliance with this standard.
The 40-hour weekly law approved in April 2023, which established a gradual decrease from the current 45 hours, to reach 40 hours in 2028. This is how in 2026 the working day will be reduced from 44 to 42 hours; and in 2028, forty, making Chile the Latin American country with the shortest work week along with Ecuador.
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