Session 12: Human Rights

Article 24: Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Observation and Experience

We, millennials, are very goal-driven and we do whatever it takes in order to achieve our desires. What’s important to us it to bring home the bacon even if it means we need to work longer hours and sacrifice weekends and day-offs. However, there’s always a trade-off in every activity or situation. In economics, we were taught of the concept of opportunity cost. According to business dictionary, opportunity cost is the value of something that we gave up in order to achieve something else. Opportunity cost is also applicable in the workplace. When finishing deadlines, we have the option to choose whether to extend our working time or to rest and do it the next day during the normal working hours. Based on experience and observations on my current workplace, we opt to choose option one which is to work overtime in order to finish the task. There are even employees who are working on a weekend just to finish all their tasks. As a result, employees are stressed and some are experiencing health problems.

Last 2017, there was a big news about an advertising agency employee who died because of working overtime. In the events, advertising, and production business environment, working overtime is a norm. I asked a friend who worked before as a creative designer in one advertising agency about their working condition and she mentioned that it’s worse. They go to work at 10AM and the earliest time that they could leave their desk is 11PM which means that they are working for more than 12 hours every day. She also mentioned that the fast-faced work environment and competition are the reasons why it is stressful to work in an advertising agency. She said that it’s fulfilling when you finish your task and you see how successful it went but when I asked her if she wants to go back there, her answer is “Never Again”.

My company is very lenient when it comes to work schedule. We are enjoying the flexi-time working schedule wherein we can go to the office at our anytime before 10 AM then leave our desk 8 hours later. Despite of this flexible working schedule, I'm still guilty of working overtime because I need to finish a lot of tasks. 

Analysis and Reflection

Article 24 of the International Human Rights declaration caught my attention when we were asked to choose an article to write about. I didn’t expect that there’s a provision that it related to rest and leisure. Article 24 states that “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay”. With the current working schedule that some of us are going through, I now see its importance. Under Republic Act No. 1880, working hours for the Philippines is eight hours a day, exclusive of lunch break, or a total of 40 hours per week. However, a lot of employees are working beyond the required eight hours. According to Philippine Statistical Authority, more than 8.1 million Filipinos worked for more than eight hours in 2018. This is alarming because studies showed that excessive work hours could cause serious health problems that may lead to death.

I think the government and companies should work hand in hand to address this extended working hours’ problem. They could impose a strict rule that employees must leave their desk after eight hours of work. Aside from that, the companies could provide recreational programs for the employees to lessen their level of stress such as yoga class, Zumba, or art sessions. Managers should allow employees to take leaves even if work schedule is tight. They must understand how important it is to have healthy employees in order to achieve the organizations goal.

Commitment and Action

Work hard but know when to stop. We only have one body and it’s our obligation to take good care of it. We must learn to manage our time properly and understand that rest is as important as work. In my organization, I commit to promote work life balance to my colleagues. I will tell them to leave the office at 6PM and do not bring our laptops at home so that we could really rest. Since we are working in an airline, I will encourage my colleagues to use our free airline tickets for recreation and rest and not just for work related trips.