Tomás Kachadourian warns that factories are operating at 70 hours despite the 40-hour law. The gap arises from low wages and staff shortages. The reform requires electronic records to ensure fair payments and increase productivity by 2030.

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While the legal framework moves towards a historic reduction of the workweek from 48 to 40 hours, the operational reality in production centers tells a radically different story. In an interview for My Pocket, Tomás Kachadourian, Business Intelligence Director at InfoBlock, highlights that there is a profound disparity between official data and what happens day-to-day on company production lines in Mexico.

Despite official figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) indicating that approximately 13.4 million people work more than 58 hours, Kachadourian warns that these measurements may be underestimating the true workload in the industrial sector.

“The operational reality is that I have to work 70-hour weeks,” said the specialist, noting that this phenomenon occurs in micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) as well as large corporations.

The Origin of Excess: Between Scarcity and Need

This “gap” between law and practice is not accidental. According to InfoBlock's analysis, the excessive use of overtime in factories responds to two critical factors. On one hand, there is a severe shortage of skilled labor; companies cannot find enough technical personnel to fill the necessary positions, forcing them to extend the shifts of current workers.

On the other hand, the economic factor plays a decisive role for the employee. In an environment where Mexico remains one of the OECD countries with the lowest salaries—with an annual average of just 20,423 dollars compared to over 94,000 in Luxembourg—overtime becomes a financial survival strategy.

“On a day with triple hours, you can earn almost as much as you do in your entire week.”, explained Kachadourian, which incentivizes workers to accept grueling shifts to compensate for their basic income.

The challenge of accuracy in registration

The implementation of the 40-hour work week, which will be carried out gradually by reducing two hours per year starting in 2027 until completion in 2030, adds a layer of technical complexity for organizations. The main challenge is not just the reduction in time, but the traceability and quality of the information generated by attendance systems.

InfoBlock points out that, although 95% of large Mexican companies already have electronic time-tracking systems in place, many face serious inconsistencies resulting from sudden shift changes, operational issues, and manual overtime calculations.

This lack of accuracy is costly: it is estimated that errors in overtime pay account for between 1% and 2% of a company's total payroll.

Productivity: The Missing Link

The 70-hour gap also highlights a structural competitiveness issue. Mexico is the country in the OECD with the most hours worked per year, with an average of 2,308 hours, far surpassing nations like Germany (1,294 hours) or Norway (1,388 hours).

However, this excess time does not translate into wealth; the country produces barely $25 per hour worked.

Kachadourian suggests that the 40-hour reform is an opportunity for companies to stop viewing labor solely as a cheap expense and start valuing efficiency.

“It's an opportunity to really start measuring and valuing people's work time much more,” the executive stressed, emphasizing that the digitization of records will allow employees to have greater transparency about their own working hours and ensure that every additional minute is compensated in accordance with the law.

A paradigm shift for 2030

With the new legislation, the threshold for overtime pay will shift. By the year 2030, overtime will begin to be counted starting at hour 41, instead of hour 49 as is currently the case.

This means that a worker who today works 48 hours for an ordinary salary will, in 2030, receive payment for 8 overtime hours for that same amount of time.

The success of this transition will depend on companies' ability to close the operational gap identified by InfoBlock. The adoption of registration technologies that guarantee consistent and verifiable data will be fundamental to prevent the pressure to comply with the law from ultimately jeopardizing or making invisible the work that today, in many factories across the country, still extends to 70 hours per week.

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This article was published on the website My Pocket by Kenia Lizbeth Chávez García.