Thailand: Two draft bills to improve workers’ rights

Employer Action Code: Monitor

The Thailand House of Representatives has approved two draft bills aimed, respectively, at enhancing working conditions and at providing for better work/life balance by limiting working time and increasing leave benefits.

Key details

Proposed changes in the first bill, to improve working conditions, include:

• Reducing statutory working time from a six-day workweek of 48 hours to a five-day workweek of 40 hours, with no reduction in pay. The workweek for hazardous work would similarly be reduced from 42 to 35 hours
• Increasing the minimum duration of employer-paid annual leave from six to 10 workdays and reducing the minimum service requirement for leave entitlement from one year to 120 days

Proposed changes to improve work/life balance include:

• Entitling employees suffering from menstruation pain to up to three days of leave per month. This menstruation leave would be separate from the general 30-day sick leave entitlement and would be payable by the employer
• Establishing a new entitlement to family care leave of up to 15 workdays per year for employees caring for a family member or another individual in the same household
• Providing breastfeeding employees with two 30-minute breaks during a regular eight-hour workday to nurse, at minimum for one year after birth. Companies would be required to provide suitable facilities for breastfeeding/expressing breast milk

Employer implications

Employers should monitor the progress of both legislative initiatives. After approving the bills in principle, the House set up committees to review the bills before further processing. How long this legislative process will take is unknown at the time of writing. The proposed changes in the first bill would align labor legislation with common employer working time and annual leave practices; among companies surveyed by WTW, employers typically observe a 40-hour, five-day workweek and grant at least 10 days of annual leave after one year of service. The new entitlements provided by the second bill, however, would require many employers to change their practices.