MOL getting opinions on 3-day weekend proposal: Minister

Taipei, Nov. 24 (CNA) The Ministry of Labor (MOL) is collecting opinions on a public proposal for three-day weekends in Taiwan, Labor Minister Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) said Monday, ahead of having to provide a formal response on the issue by early December.

The MOL is gathering opinions from different types of workers and businesses to evaluate the proposal and gain a better understanding of the impact a three-day weekend system would have, Hung told reporters after appearing on a radio program Monday morning.

"We fully understand that many workers are hoping for further reductions in working hours," he said, while noting that Taiwan has a wide variety of enterprises and employment types.

Taiwan currently has a 40-hour work week, though many people work longer hours than the mandated limit.

The MOL reported in 2024 that annual working hours in Taiwan were the fifth highest in the world among 39 economies at 2,030 hours, the highest since hitting 2,033 hours in 2018.

Hung was responding to a proposal submitted to the government's public policy participation platform that called for a four-day workweek with three days off.

Under the platform's rules, a proposal becomes a case once it receives 5,000 endorsements within 60 days of being launched, and the four-day workweek petition passed the threshold with over 5,700 endorsements on Oct. 7.

The competent authority -- in this case the Labor Ministry -- must issue a formal response within two months after that, meaning it has until Dec. 7 to respond to the three-day weekend initiative.

The government has not made much mention of the issue publicly since Oct. 7, and Hung did not say if the government has consulted with various interest groups on the proposal in the past six weeks.

He was also non-committal when pressed on the idea.

Asked if implementing a three-day weekend in Taiwan would lead to pay cuts or worsen labor shortages in some sectors, Hung did not directly respond to the question but reiterated that the government is still collecting opinions.

"We have seen that different groups of workers hold different views on this issue, and I believe companies also have varying opinions depending on their size," he said.

In 2023, a similar proposal met the threshold for a response on the platform, and the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration and the MOL both responded that the initiative could not be adopted, citing factors such as its wide-ranging impact and the need for more comprehensive supporting measures.

When reporters wondered if overall conditions had improved enough to allow the introduction of a three-day weekend, Hung again stopped short of giving a direct answer, saying the authorities "still need to collect everyone's views."

Hung said one way the MOL has tried to reduce excessively long working hours has been by raising the minimum wage 10 straight years (to NT$29,500 or US$940 per month starting on Jan. 1, 2026) so that lower-wage workers can make enough without having to rely on overtime.

Some countries have started to experiment with or adopted versions of a four-day workweek, including the United Kingdom and Iceland, but such schemes are generally not mandatory and often apply only to certain companies or trial programs.