MANILA: The USD22.8-billion investment pledges President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. secured in his three-day state visit to China from Jan. 3 to 5 are expected to generate thousands of jobs and allow the transfer of technology to the country.   “It’s certainly going to produce many, many jobs, when the investments come into play, when they start their operations,” the President said in a media interview in Beijing.   “Mag-uumpisa pa ‘yan sa (That will start in) training… capacity building— doon sa magiging empleyado nila (of their future employees) … that will be starting very soon,” Marcos added.   Chinese

ISTANBUL: Shorter workdays and more flexible work schedules, like those utilized during the Covid-19 pandemic, can benefit economies, enterprises and workers as well as pave the way for a better and healthier work-life balance, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said Friday.   Analyzing different working-time arrangements and their effects on work-life balance, including shift work, on-call work, compressed hours and hours-averaging schemes, ILO’s Working Time and Work-Life Balance Around the World report found that these flexible schedules provide “better family life.”   “There is a substantial amount of evidence that work–life balance policies provide significant benefits to enterprises, supporting the