Concerns of employees and unions

Employees’ primary concerns associated with flexible work schedules are the loss in overtime income and possible abuse by employers to avoid paying the differential rates for overtime, rest day and public holiday work. Also, without the differential rates, employers would have no incentive to use their manpower resources efficiently and to avoid deploying their workers to work excessive hours. The flexibility accorded to companies to maximise working time to meet fluctuating demands could potentially disadvantage the lower income employees who may be deprived of their overtime earnings as the weekly working hours are averaged out over a longer period. The impact on take home pay could be significant for employees who perform substantial overtime work and whose overtime pay constitutes a large proportion of the total monthly income. Another implication is that employees who have earned overtime income can only receive such payments after the quarterly, 6 monthly or even yearly working hours have been fulfilled as the case may be.

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