Working hard
While Cinco de Mayo isn’t a federal holiday in Mexico — the scale of the festivities north of the border could be to blame if that fact shocks you — workers who are in today may have even more reason to celebrate thanks to a bill that’s passing through the country's Congress.
Over 40% of Mexican workers are currently doing 6-day weeks, but they could see their hours slashed from 48 to 40 thanks to the employee-friendly legislation that passed out of the committee stage last week.
Hardly working?
The move comes while other nations around the world continue to trial and talk about the possibility of a 4-day working week. Indeed, Senator Bernie Sanders called for a 32-hour working week for Americans just yesterday, saying workers in the US “deserve a break”. And, by comparison to a lot of European countries, he could have a point.
Data from the OECD reveals that while Americans are working ~337 hours a year less than Mexican workers, they’re still notching an extra 75 hours a year compared to the OECD average of 1,716 hours per year. While that may not sound like a lot, at only an extra hour-and-a-half or so a week, it’s a big difference to the hours some other nations are clocking in.
Workers in Germany, for example, put in 1,349 hours on average over 2021 — 367 hours below the OECD average, 442 less than America, and a genuinely staggering 779 hours less than in Mexico.
