Venezuela's Chavez Raises Possibility Of Shortening Work Day

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez renewed Thursday the possibility of shortening the work day, a proposal that was included in a Constitutional referendum rejected last year and that now could be part of new labor legislation the National Assembly will begin to review in August. 'That's a debate that we need to have,' Chavez said in a nationally televised address on the possibility of reducing the legal work week from the current 40 hours per week. 'Eight hours a day. That's one third of your day. In the end that's not life,' he said before mentioning Karl Marx and saying that 'a person cannot be a slave to work.' A constitutional reform project which was narrowly defeated in December last year included a reduction in the work day to six hours a day, but it also had other changes like the elimination of presidential term limits.