Labor laws are particularly important to the system of labor relations. The basis of labor law is the master-servant system that originated in Great Britain. Enacting labor legislation was actually necessary at the time to regulate the nation’s labor market.
Bangladesh has a system of labor law that dates back more than a century. During the British era, in 1881, the Indian subcontinent passed its first labor law.
The British government then passed a number of laws addressing various labor-related concerns, including salary, working hours, child employment, maternity benefits, and trade union activity.
Nearly all of the pre-partition legislation remained in effect after the Indian subcontinent was divided in 1947, with some changes and additions. The Bangladesh Laws Order (President’s Order No. 48) was passed by the Bangladeshi government in 1971, allowing it to continue enforcing the earlier laws.
A Brief Discussion About Working Hours and Labour Law
A rather thorough and modern law is the Bangladesh Labour Act of 2006. The law is a compilation and revision of the 25 individual acts.
The law’s covering of terms of service and employment, employment of young people, maternity benefits, health and hygiene, safety, and welfare, working hours and leave, wages and payment, and workers’ compensation for injuries instantly reveals how broad it is.
The regulation of employment and safety of dock workers, provident funds, apprenticeship, penalty and procedure, administration, inspection, and trade unions and industrial relations are only a few of the topics covered.
These are the world’s most complete legal systems for the welfare and protection of workers.
This essay examines how labor legislation is regulated in relation to working hours, leaves with holidays, and maternity benefits, identifying how national norms compare to those of other countries as well as some other opposing viewpoints.
Working Hours:-
Statutory working hour limits are required by the majority of labor law systems.
The first goal of enforcing hours restrictions was to provide a secure and healthy workplace and sufficient downtime in between shifts.
However, during the past century, hours restrictions have come to be increasingly considered as a means of achieving other governmental objectives, such as encouraging productivity and lowering unemployment, by enabling workers to combine their paid labor with their family obligations and other commitments.
The Labour Act of 2006 in our nation specifies daily and weekly working hours as well as hours for overtime and their compensation. This essay makes a sincere effort to concentrate on the working hours as specified in the Labour Act of 2006, as well as the working hours in other nations and the international standard.
Daily limit:
(i) International standards
The Conventions Nos. 1 and 30 both set an 8-hour restriction on typical hours as one of their daily working hour limitations. Recommendation No. 1 and Convention No.
The 40-hour workweek is thought to be a sufficient assurance of an 8-hour workday or fewer, hence Articles 116 do not include any day restrictions.
According to international regulations, daily hours can be averaged over a 48-hour workweek, allowing the 8-hour restriction to be increased to 9 hours in industry (Convention No. 1)19 and 10 hours in commerce (Convention No. 30).
(ii) National standards
The Labour Act of 2006 states that the daily work limit is an 8-hour day, but that it cannot be exceeded by more than a 10-hour day, provided that section 108 is satisfied.
The 8-hour day
The majority of nations in the world—more than two thirds—impose a cap of eight hours each day. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and the continental United Republic of Tanzania are the exceptions, along with Chile’s limit of 10 hours and the three nations of Indonesia (8 hours and 7 hours), Namibia (9 hours and 712 hours), and South Africa, where different limits apply to 5-day and 6-day workweeks (9 hours and 8 hours).
Weekly limit:
(i) International standards
The Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No. 1) and the Hours of Work (Commerce and Offices) Convention, 1930 (No. 30), the first working hours regulations issued by the International Labour Organization, set a limit of 48 hours per week for normal (pre-overtime) hours.
The more recent international strategy is the promotion of a 40-hour workweek as a standard to be reached, gradually if required, by ILO member States. This strategy is reflected in the Forty-Hour Week Convention, 1935 (No. 47), and the Reduction of Hours of Work Recommendation, 1962 (No. 116).
(ii) National standards
According to Section 102 of the Labour Act of 2006, an adult worker can only work a maximum of 48 hours per week. However, if overtime is included, that number cannot exceed 60 hours per week as long as Section 108 is satisfied.
The dominance of the 40-hour week
The most common weekly hours standard nowadays is the 40-hour work week.
A typical restriction of 40 hours or less has been imposed in nearly half of the 103 nations examined for this analysis.
Only two of the others have weekly limitations longer than 48 hours, with the others having limits between 42 and 45 hours and the 48-hour week.
However, there are significant geographical variations in the imposed weekly hour limitations.
The majority of industrialized nations have a 40-hour cap.
These include the US, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, and the majority of the EU-15[3].
Belgium (38 hours) and France have a lower threshold than the rest of the world (35 hours).
The 40-hour limit has a similar strong influence in central and eastern Europe.
This norm has been adopted by six of the eleven Asian nations that have implemented a general hour limit. All save Singapore, which has enacted a 44-hour cap, have laws requiring a 40-hour workweek.
Maximum hour limit:
The goal of Working Hours and Labour Law regimes is to prevent the negative effects of working extremely long hours on one’s health, safety, and family life. These regimes place limits on total daily and weekly hours, including overtime.
The maximum amount of working hours allowed by law is represented by these maximums. The regime in which they are positioned determines their significance.
Collective agreements frequently prevent working hours from rising to the level of the permitted maximums in a number of western European nations. However, in some nations, maximum limitations serve as the final legal impediment to excessive working hours.
(i) International standards
International standards consider extra hours to be exceptional and normal Working Hours and Labour Law limitations to be the principal limitation on working hours. Because of this, maximum restrictions are not a key component of the global regulatory framework.
The standards make no mention of a daily break interval or a cap on the number of hours worked each day or each week. The international instruments still demand that a national limit be in place, even though they do not specify any exact limits on overtime hours.
(ii) National standards
In Section 102 of the Labour Act of 2006, it is stated that the maximum weekly working hours shall not exceed 60 hours, and the maximum annual working hours shall not exceed 150 hours for road transport employees.
Overtime:-
Statutory restrictions on overtime labor serve the same policy goals as restrictions on regular hours: protecting health and safety and guaranteeing employees have enough time for their lives outside of paid employment.
However, in addition to formal limits, there are a variety of other ways to regulate overtime employment.
Some regulations provide restrictions on the situations in which overtime can be used by prescribing conditions for when it can be used or the steps that must be taken before it is implemented.
Comparative Analysis Among Countries
Country | Daily normal work limit | Weekly normal work limit | Overtime limit | Minimum overtime premium | Maximum daily rest period |
1.Japan | 8-hours | 40-hours | None | 25 percent | None |
2.United States | 8-hours | 40-hours | None | 50 per cent | None |
5.China | 8 hours | 40 hours | 1 hour per day, 3 hours per week and 36 hours per
month |
50 per cent | Unidentified |
6. India | No universal
Legislation[6] |
No universal
legislation |
No universal
legislation |
No universal
legislation |
No universal
Legislation |
Weekly Working Hours and Labour Law With maximum limit:
The most common weekly working hour standard now is 40 hours. A typical restriction of 40 hours or less has been imposed in nearly half of the 103 nations examined for this analysis.
Bangladesh has the option to cut the amount of hours worked per week under section 102 of the Bangladesh Labour Act of 2006. The fact that our country’s maximum weekly Working Hours and Labour Law are so high further encourages employers to use forced labor, which has disastrous effects on young people and female employees.
Certain sorts of industries that require substantially more physical labor than other industries also have lower life expectancies as a result of this overwork.
Final Thoughts
The Labour Act of 2006, which was enacted in 2006, consolidated 25 existing labor-related legislation that required working hours, leave, holidays, maternity benefits, and other things.
This essay aims to investigate these clauses with a focus on both the domestic and global labor law systems.
The majority of the time, the national labor law system’s laws pertaining to these are nearly identical to those at the international level.
The application of our country’s labor laws, however, is exactly the contrary. A few changes are needed to address the incompleteness and include the necessary clauses in accordance with the above-mentioned suggestions.