Last night the news made my eyes bulge and scratch my head. This is because I can’t believe somebody will propose that we have a four days work week.

Four days work week.

There are 5 reasons why I do not subscribe to this proposal:

The proponents argue that four days work week will allow people to find additional jobs. But how can they get one if there is none available.

I check the government website and we have for the record 15 Holidays and adding additional one day will just create more holidays for the people. When in abroad the impression of other foreigners is that we are an Island of Holidays. Making the proposal legal, we will now have secured a tagline for our tourism – ironically with grave effects to our economy.

More holidays will just make us lazy. In fact, we are already are. If you talk to OFWs that worked in Singapore and US they will tell you that we are still a country that moves in slow pace – a bucolic barrio that is the image that we still harbor in our psyche even if we have seen urbanization slowly crawling in our world.

I think that the proposal is based in what the proponent sees in Metro Manila but once implemented it will have a general impact in a country that has few developed cities. Provinces and municipalities wanting to urbanize and develop will see their aspirations go in slow motion, as if time has stood still – no need to explain why.

In this globalize economy we need to be more competitive. Some of us are already working seven (7) or six (6) days a week just to keep phase with the demands and challenges of our neighboring countries. If we will plug this proposal into our system we will see a big drop of productivity. Actually, even in a six day work schedule, the productivity of our people can still be questioned. That is why there is a million peso industry in productivity training and seminars.

Well these are my 5 reasons. For now I am against it, but in the long term maybe yes if our country has a lot of high value assets that catapults us to being a developed nation. Right now, we can’t see anything high value being produced by our country, as we are pushed to the wall of providing OCWs and Call Center Agents just to support our economy and growing population.