Administration Senator Francis Tolentino on Monday said the bill that seeks to protect an employee’s “rest hours” and prevent him from taking up tasks and meetings that cut his personal time due to a work-from-home arrangement is necessary to keep the country’s workforce more productive.
Tolentino said Senate Bill No. 2475 or the proposed “Workers’ Rest Law,” which he filed last week and which seeks to give workers the “right to disconnect” would be beneficial to both the employer and the employee.
The senator acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the work-life balance of the country’s workers, therefore, providing a limit to a worker’s task outside of their work hours would help stabilize their well-being.
“Given the pandemic... there is no clear demarcation now between your work hours and your own personal time, your family time and it has now reached a point where your work-life balance environment has been affected,” Tolentino said in an interview over ANC's Headstart.
“This bill will ensure that the employee will be more productive because it now recognizes that he has a right to attend to his family role,” he explained.
With the country’s economy still struggling to recover post-pandemic, Tolentino said he is certain that a hybrid work situation will continue in the next couple of years.
“So it prodded me to really think about the effects on the employees as well as the employer, because we are now referring to the productivity of the employee in terms of mental stress, mental fatigue,” he pointed out.
“Studies have shown that mental stress, mental fatigue can lead to loss of appetite, lesser productivity on the part of the employee and the feeling of isolation and more stress, more pressure being given to you can lead to a stage of social isolation and depression,” added the lawmaker.
“So this right to disconnect will help both the employee and the employer to make them more productive,” Tolentino stressed.
Under the bill, violators of the proposed law would be required to pay affected workers P1,000 each hour of work rendered beyond their work hours.
It also penalizes employers who will discriminate employees who choose to assert their rights under the act. The employers stand to face a prison sentence of not less than one month but not more than six months and pay a fine of over P100,000.
"There are distractions in working from home that’s why we must give employees to really feel the demarcation between family life and work life. This will lead to more productive employees,” Tolentino said.
“You don’t have to be inundated by calls, text messages coming from your employer in the middle of the night telling what is expected of you,” he further said.