SEN. Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. has asked Congress to pass a law allowing “flexible working hours” to ease workers’ physical and psychological burdens, and save costs from worsening traffic gridlocks.
Revilla’s Senate Bill 673 proposed the adoption of “voluntary work arrangements to help local employers and employees save time and resources, especially in saving the cost of traffic congestion.”
Revilla’s bill, entitled “An Act Amending Article 83 of the Presidential Decree 442, otherwise known as the Labor Code of the Philippines,” was crafted “to identify some flexible work arrangements that may be adopted by employers, including compressed workweek where the normal number of working days in a week is reduced but the total number of working hours remains, and flexi-holidays where the employees agree to avail the holidays at some other days.”
Given the advancement in information and communication technology, employees can work outside the premises of the workplace and sustain working beyond eight hours “without sacrificing its quality,” Revilla said.
This kind of
arrangement, he noted, is recognized by Department of Labor and Employment
(DOLE) through Department Advisory 2, “Guidelines on the Adoption of
Flexible Work Arrangements,” and its subsequent Department Advisory 4, Series
of 2010, “Guidelines on the Implementatuon of Flexible Work Arrangements and
the Exemption From the Nightwork Prohibition for Women Employees in the
Business Process Outsourcing.”
A flexible work schedule will allow employees to achieve a “work-life balance” which will make them “more energized, satisfied, fulfilled and productive.”