Work-from-home bill passes second reading in Senate
The prospect of working from home just became a lot closer to reality as Senate Bill (SB) No. 1363 or the Telecommuting Act of 2017 just moved closer to being a law.
The night of May 10 saw senators finishing the second reading of SB 1363, which seeks to promote a telecommuting set-up by encouraging employers to let their employees work from their homes, effectively replacing the daily commute.
TELECOMMUTING ACT OF 2017. SB 1363, or the Telecommuting Act of 2017, aims to promote work-life balance and ease traffic woes by letting employees work from home./IMAGE Senate
Senator Joel Villanueva, who authored SB 1363 and is the head of the senate committee on labor, employment, and human resources development, said they are “looking forward to starting the period of individual amendments next week, and we hope to pass the measure on third and final reading before the last day of session on May 31.”
“We want to push for our Filipino workers to have a meaningful work-life balance by encouraging employers to explore telecommuting as a way of allowing work flexibility,” Villanueva added.
“This bill is for the good of all Filipino workers. Thanks to technology, they’ll be able to do their jobs without having to leave their homes. This gives them more time for their loved ones since they won’t need to sit through traffic just to get to work,” Villanueva said.
The bill has received support not just from the British Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines but also from the American Chamber of Commerce and the Department of Labor and Employment.
“We all believe this will increase productivity, partly an answer to the problems of traffic and infrastructure, people spend so much time commuting and therefore there is a tremendous loss in productivity,” BCCP Executive Chairman Chris Nelson said in a labor briefing in Makati.
Apart from promoting work-life balance, SB 1363 also looks to address traffic congestion by not having every single office worker commute to and from work in Metro Manila every day. The law, however, does not require all companies to have a telecommuting program.
The Labor Department also said mechanisms should be set in place to avoid violations of the Labor Code. They suggest conducting a pilot test to check for and address loopholes.
Source: Senate, CNN Philippines
