Factories reduce work hours with eye to employees’ well-being

Many factories in Ho Chi Minh City have been reducing workers’ weekly hours below the legal maximum of 48 to give them more time for themselves without compromising their income.

When the end-of-shift bell rings at 4 p.m. at a factory belonging to industrial sewing machine producer Juki Vietnam in District 7’s Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone workers have five minutes to clean and organize their work area before leaving.

Nguyen Thi My Linh, who has worked at Juki for 28 years, said until a few years ago her shift used to be the standard 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day except Sunday with 70 minutes for lunch and two other breaks.

But after workers expressed difficulty in picking up their children, the management agreed to shorten their shift by 25 minutes.

“Getting off early helps me avoid traffic and gives me enough time to pick up my child in Nha Be District, take them home and then to District 5 for tutoring,” Linh says.

Nguyen Phuoc Dai, chairman of the company’s labor union, says employees also get two Saturdays off per month after they said they did not have enough weekend time with their families, which has reduced their week to less than 44 hours.

The maximum allowed by law is 48 hours, not including overtime.

Dai noted that the company did not reduce wages or income when it cut the work hours, and instead invested in technology and optimized production processes to ensure productivity.

An Thien Pharmaceutical Corporation in Nha Be’s Hiep Phuoc Industrial Park similarly used to have a 48-hour week before switching to 44 hours in the past decade.