3.

BENEFICIALITY

Shifting the working hours of 8am to 8pm, Monday to Saturday for government
office hours is not beneficial in improving the work-life balance of the workers. Many
recent studies found that working long hours or beyond the regular eight hours have
negative effects on health, sleeping hours, family and social life, and work
performance. According to Professor J M Harrington of Institute of Occupational
Health, University of Birmingham, “normal hours of work are generally taken to
mean a working day with hours left for recreation and rest. Rest is a night time
activity, work a daytime activity” and “extended hours of work is generally accepted
to mean working more than 48 hours a week. This can occur on either day work or
shift work due to either a high number of hours worked per day or a higher number
of days worked per week.”1

Greenleft Weekly of Australia published an article that any work week that is
more than 50 hours is not reasonable. It can result to “acute effects on fatigue, mood
and performance. Without adequate coping strategies, this leads to chronic effects
on mental and physical health, including elevated risk of cardiovascular
gastrointestinal problems, and heightened safety risks.” 2 This research was
conducted by professors of the Griffith University Centre for Work, Organisation and
Wellbeing from August to December 2011. In addition, a research by the University
of New South Wales in 2011 made a point that “fatigue is a biological drive for
recuperative rest”, thus lack of rest can have a big impact on the performance of the
workers. Everyone of us is always looking forward to a great weekend to have a good
rest from a stressful week. Less than 24 hours of rest is not enough since you still
have to do some chores on Sunday such as doing the laundry, going to church and
spending time with your family. Thus, going to work the next day without enough
rest would make you less efficient and less focused.

1 BMJ Journals <https://oem.bmj.com/content/58/1/68> accessed on December 20, 2018

2Greenleft Weekly <https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/twelve-hour-shifts-are-killing-workers> accessed on
December 21, 2018
 “The disruption of circadian rhythm, combined with sleep deficit and fatigue, can
lead to workplace inefficiency, particularly in the early hours of the morning. This
pattern of cause and effect has been reported for many groups of shift workers. The
shortening of the sleep period caused by an early start at work has also been shown
to be associated with an increase in errors and accidents in transport workers.”3 The
proposed working hours of government will leave the employees 12 hours each day
for traveling from home to work and vice versa, doing the household chores, taking
care of the family especially if both parents are employed, sleeping and other
recreational activities. Imagine doing these things from a very tiring job from
Monday to Saturday. It will surely affect the alertness and efficiency of workers. It
will also affect the focus of the workers while driving going to work in Metro Manila
and going home to the nearby provinces.

Family being the basic social institution and foundation of the state which plays
a vital role in its total development4, the State must give its full protection to the
family. Family and marital obligations can be severely affected by long working hours.
It can disrupt the family and social activities especially on a weekend since either or
both of the parents are busy working. Sometimes parents cannot attend on some
school activities of their children. In support, a study showed that most of parents
choose their paid work rather than giving time to their children.5 It can be argued
that parents are working to provide all the necessary needs of their children,
however, we on the negative side believe that money cannot compensate the loss of
time of the parents to their children.

In an interview conducted, Karen, a mother who worked for long hours said “I
haven’t had that amount of time just to chill out with the kids ... just haven’t been as
available to them, which is really hard, because you don’t get the time back” which is
also similar to Lani, “The only thing I think about is the time I spend at work affects
my family life. Like, spending more time working and not enough time here with
3 BMJ Journals <https://oem.bmj.com/content/58/1/68> accessed on December 20, 2018
4 Section 1, Artcile XV, 1987 Philippine Constitution
5 Joseph Rowntree Foundation <https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/effect-parents-employment-outcomes-children>
accessed on December 21, 2018
family...I am afraid that I am not going to know my children.”6 The time devoted to
children must be seen as an important part of their development in all aspects.
Another single parents will have a hard time managing their time to be with his/her
child. Even though we have nannies and other relatives, their love and care are
incomparable with the love and care given by their natural parents.

There were also some negative impacts to the spouses of the long-hour workers.
Since one of the spouse is busy working, the other spouse is also overload with
parenting and domestic duties. In the same interview that was conducted, Tessa
whose working hours is lesser than of his husband said “It does get annoying,
because the burden of everything, I mean, I can squeeze my [work] hours in to a
shorter day, but then the burden of everything else is on me, and the sick days and
dropping off and picking up from pre-school and going to the doctor’s and taking
them to swimming on Saturday mornings and doing all the shopping. So Saturdays
are just as stressful as a work day really, because it’s full on.”7

6 Ministry of Social Development

<https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/journals-and-magazines/social-poli
cy-journal/spj35/35-parents-long-work-hours.html> accessed on December 21, 2018
7 Ministry of Social Development
<https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/journals-and-magazines/social-poli
cy-journal/spj35/35-parents-long-work-hours.html> accessed on December 21, 2018