Brazil moved to cut its working-week to five days from the current six, becoming the latest Latin American country to push for improved worker conditions.

The region has some of the world’s longest working hours, with laborers there often clocking more than 2,000 hours a year compared to around 1,700 in the US, and close to 1,400 in Germany.

However some analysts have suggested that shorter working hours should come via increased productivity, which remains paltry across much of Latin America: Output per worker has decreased across much of the region in recent years, with workers in Mexico — Latin America’s second-largest economy — producing less per hour than they did in 1981.