Get back to work
Wales Business — By Duncan Higgitt on August 30, 2010 7:00 am
Good day off? Is it worth taking a bank holiday for this?
THIS morning, many of you will have climbed out of bed (later than usual for a Monday) and the first thing you would have done involved going to the window to check the colour of the sky. Should it be blue, you may have given a little utterance of gratitude to your god. More likely – given the monsoon month we’ve been having – you will have cursed the fates.
The weather today, on this bank holiday Monday, perhaps affects our behaviour and plans more than on any other day of the year. If it is fine, we may visit one of our fine beaches, head up the Brecon Beacons, have a barbecue, work on the garden or on the outside the house.
In fact, even if the rain is sideways, we should all thank our lucky stars, because we should all be in work. Instead, we’ve all participated in an official mitch-off.
As a practice, taking bank holidays off is as arcane as pub opening hours, the dog licence, shillings, broken biscuits in jars at corner stores, and anything else the passing of which Roy Noble frequently laments. They were introduced to address issues of a completely different age, and it is time that they were done away with, in order to reflect the times we live in now.
This year, we will be given eight days off in total – New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Early May Bank Holiday, Spring Bank Holiday (both in May), Summer Bank Holiday (today), Christmas Day and Boxing Day. In 2012, we will also be given June 5 off, as it will be the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. If you are lucky enough to work in the public sector, you also have the option of taking St David’s Day off and also the Queen’s birthday. There may be others, too.
Of those eight dates, only three should remain – Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, which we have our Scottish cousins to thank for. Even the last is debatable, but you won’t get any work out of anyone aged between 18 and 55 on that day anyway, because they no doubt will have indulged in far too much carousing the night before. Why the advent of a new year is anything to celebrate is questionable, in any case, as it brings no discernible difference any anyone’s life. The bank balance remains the same, hospital waiting lists are just as long, taxes still have to be paid.
Given that less than 5% of the population attends church, there is no need for the rest of us to take Easter off. Most of us will go worship at some church of retail instead, compelling increasing numbers of low paid shop staff to give up their just-as-deserved break in order for the rest of us to indulge in what passes for spiritual sustenance these days. Similarly, May Day has no importance any more, and the less said about marking the summer the better.
Bank holidays are called so because that is exactly what they were. Until 1834, there had been around 33 saints’ days and other religious holidays observed by the Bank of England. But in that year, they were reduced to just four – Good Friday, May 1, November 1 and Christmas day. In 1871, Sir John Lubbock, a Liberal politician and banker, introduced the Bank Holidays Act, giving Good Friday, Easter Monday, Whit Friday (the first Monday in May), the first Monday in August, Christmas Day and Boxing Day – or St Stephen’s Day, as it was as widely called back then. Sir John, a keen cricketer, wanted banking staff (hardly an industrious breed back then) to be given the time off to take part in local matches between villages. Delighted at this unexpected piece of good fortune, the first bank holidays were named by the public as St Lubbock’s Days.
Although the Banking and Financial Dealings Act of 1971 tightened up some of the changes that had drip-dripped through in the century between the two laws, what it really allowed for was the varying of dates and holidays through the use of royal proclamation, necessary to ensure we hold on to all our days off in a changing calendar.
No doubt there is a way of working out how much money is lost to the UK economy through bank holidays, and while that might strengthen this argument, what is more interesting is who gets to take bank holidays off and who doesn’t. Many of the low-paid jobs in this country are organised in shift patterns that don’t stop for bank holidays. So along with nurses – who remain criminally underpaid compared to their responsibilities – medics, the police and the rest of emergency services, immigrant cleaners, aforementioned minimum wage shop workers and restaurant staff, some of whom will see their tips trousered by their employers, all get to work.
Leaving aside emotive connotations of a holiday for the affluent, this makes no economic sense, either. What bank holidays achieve, in effect, is to give our wealth creators the day off while the wage slaves soldier on. Of course, that’s a uniform conclusion that ignores all the entrepreneurs who haven’t had a day off in seven months, or the kindly boss who decides that they’ll go in today so that their staff can take a proper bank holiday. But it’s the effect here that’s important.
Going a step further, what have we done to deserve these days off? We all work and we get paid. If we don’t like it, we move to another job. In a recession, it is in the interest of staff to go that little bit further if it helps secure the viability of their business, particularly if the dole queue’s the alternative. Not only that, but those who come early and work late usually get promoted (and therefore paid more money) more frequently than clock watchers. We live in an age where individual rights have replaced collective responsibility. When someone folds their arms and says: “This recession is not down to me, it’s down to those greedy (merchant) bankers in London”, putting their own interests first and failing to see the part – however small – they can play in bringing about the turnaround, then the effect on the economy is ruinous.
So let’s have bank holidays for events we really celebrate. Across the year, that would mean Christmas, New Year (grudgingly) and St David’s Day, which has become increasingly important and marked in Wales. And we should use the royal proclamation to get the Monday off if Wales win the Grand Slam.
As for the weather today, what do you think?
Tags: Bank holiday, weather
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26 Comments
Interesting piece, Duncan!
I can’t say I overly agree with you, but you do provide some important points in a well written article, that I did enjoy!
I was having the same debate with Dad the other day, he works in a bank, and thrives on his bank holidays, as I did when I worked in a bank when I was a student.
As a student, I used to work like a dog all summer long, and I used to thrive at the thought of August Bank Holiday coming around, as it was my day off and it meant I could indulge on a rare Sunday night out with mates in Llanelli. As a student, I couldn’t afford to take any time off (as you note in your article), but the opportunity for the one day off before we all went back to sixth form or university was well received, and many of my friends were all in the same boat.
Yes, you are right to note that these series of bank holidays were created in a completely different era, when things were different, but what’s to say we can’t change the days around for other rememberance? I would love to see St David’s Day as a Bank Holiday, and what about moving one of the bank holidays from May to September this year to commemorate The Battle of Britain and the Few? How awesome would that be?
Just a final note, you say that 5% of people go to church, so why should the rest of us get Easter off? You try giving a day off to 5% of the population on religious grounds, and see how everyone else reacts!!!
Lleu,
Thanks for your response. Good points made about Easter. My response would be that some provision could be made in a rewritten bank holidays act that would allow for Christians to argue the case for time off to attend services on Good Friday (and the more committed would obviously book time off as holiday, as those who take pilgrimages to the Holy Land around this time already do).
However, you don’t need the day off to attend a church service, and my scant memory of bible classes at school tell me that by Monday, Jesus Christ was also back behind his desk in heaven, having made a remarkable recovery and having got around most of the apostles before leaving for such a business trip.
Its a lovely sunny and warm morning here in Surrey.
As one of many who use the long weekend offered by the Bank Holiday to visit friends or family as they live more than a day trip away, or even are working in continental Europe, I fully oppose their deletion.
In fact as an employer, many of our employees are using their hoidays to have more long weekend breaks.
Also as an employer, I would be in favour of eliminating New Year and so avoid that very long Christmas-New break when weather is often at its worst, and not all are able to take a holiday in the tropics.
Thank you Duncan for writing a column I have long wanted to compose. Having read it I am minded to head to the office (I usually do on Bank Holidays as an act of two fingers to the state) and fake a crisis so that the drones are recalled. Little gives me greater pleasure than the misery of others, so their sad faces would cheer me more fully than anything the sun might do. If one turns up with sand in their shoes, all the better.
Where I would disagree, however, is on the matter of New Year’s Day being retained as a perk for the workshy. The ghastliness of “Amateur night” the evening before deserves no special leniency. The hungover tend to make better workers as they are often either too ill to speak or too wracked with guilt to object to anything.
Let’s keep this style of column going. Halloween and the anti-Catholic burning fest will be with us soon with an unsettling overfamiliarity.
Daran,
Definitely up for writing against both of those. Between the two, Hallowe’en is particularly despicable – a middle class scrounging festival imported and practised by those who would otherwise give their dying breath to decrying America and its materialist traditions.
I’m going to hold you to these views now. Thank you Duncan for this!
What a marvellously provocative article.
I used to enjoy Halloween before the US exported their version of events. As for Bonfire Night, I am amazed that the ‘guy’ has been kept in tradition, considering the meaning of it all. However, I am all for having some form of celebration to look forward to at the start of the winter, as the weather is so naff and at least there is the Six Nations to cheer you up in the wet spring.
As for bank holidays, I would certainly question the current layout over the year but not the principle. When almost all of our competitors have more than we do yet also perform better, maybe the argument is that we do not have enough? The workers on low wages used to gain from the bank holidays because of double time if they wanted to work and time off if they did not. However, employment law had slackened to such an extent that there is now little in it for many, depending on how useless the employer is in treating their staff. I would certainly support a bank holiday on St David’s Day and many councils could already manage this by moving one of their ‘non statutory days’ to March 1. I don’t know if I should tell you this, but most councils have additional bank holidays (up to four extra) which they attach to different official bank holidays every year. I believe that they originate from terms bargaining over the decades and although some have removed them through buying out, others have not.
Bank holidays should be used to encourage workers to take regular breaks as part of their work regime. Such behavour re-charges batteries, should help to keep down sickness absence and helps us all appreciate the lovely employers that we all work for. Bless ‘em one and all.
“I’m going to hold you to these views, now, thank you Duncan for this!”
LOL. The words “hoist” and “petard” come to mind…
So why do you believe the plebs should be allowed to have Christmas Day off (you’re getting as soft as old Scrooge!) but not Easter? They are both Christian holidays.
Are you actually suggesting that people should have their annual leave entitlement increased by eight days to compensate, or that we should all work an additional eight days? In which case why not take your argument to the logical conclusion and insist that everyone work 365 days a year without a break in order to repair the damage that “we” have done to the economy?
Would abolishing bank holidays even be good for the economy? Many people use the time go shopping/go on holidays etc which involve spending money. The leisure industry is of massive importance to the UK economy and would suffer under your proposals.
WA,
I think we can agree that even though the vast majority of us don’t appreciate the religious importance of Christmas (although we are probably far likely to be more spiritually-minded during the Yuletide period), it is regarded as a time for families to get together. In that respect, I would support time off.
People don’t have leave entitlement. Holidays are a privilege, not a right. And if you do the math, you’ll see that I’m proposing giving up five, not eight days. And no, I don’t think your conclusion is logical in the slightest. I haven’t suggested working weekends.
Tourism contributes 11% to this country’s economy while manufacturing, which has been in freefall for the past decade, still accounts for 18% of Welsh GDP. And what if the days are rubbish, as they have been until, ironically, today? How much money does the leisure industry take on those days? Nature of the beast, I’m afraid.
I suggest you re-read the piece. Nowhere have I blamed anyone for our damaged economy. I have said we all have a responsibility to repair it. That’s quite another thing.
Maybe it is because I have not been married for sixty thousand years and still hold out a naive hope of wanting to spend more time with the people that I love rather than working like a dog so that I can feed my addiction to work, that makes me against reducing the number of bank holidays.The UK is renowned for having a slightly pathological work culture, where many of our European friends probably think we are literally bonkers for eating our lunch in front of the computer. Reducing the number of bank holidays would only further contribute to that ‘have to be in the office from 6.00am till 9.00pm 365 days a year to get ahead’ kind of mentality that permeates British work culture which does not seem to make us any more effective, happier or indeed wealthier than say Sweden, Germany or France. Although I’m clearly no international economist, I know that to experience quality relationships, you do actually have to be there so I’m all for maintaining the number of bank holidays, and whilst we’re at it, chuck in an hours siesta after lunch. I think time taken off ‘on the sick’, does more damage to our economy than the current level of bank holidays does.
It is quality of productivity rather than quantity that the culture of work in Britain needs to think about. China is already ahead of the game on rate of productivity by a mile, if not three.
I’d be all for an hour’s siesta after lunch. Good idea. You could have 40 a year to make up for the bank holidays that have been taken away.
Incidentally the only work related emails I got today was from four Scottish police forces so I presume they don’t have today as a BH. As one who spent over 25 years working shifts BH are meaningless to me as are Saturday and Sunday…the double time was nice but that was it.
As Duncan correctly points out, so-called ‘bank holidays’ are in actual fact only ‘holidays’ for a select group of workers. For many people who work in hospitals, or in retail or social care, ‘bank holidays’ are normal working days! And contrary to popular myth all workers do not get ‘double time’ for having to work on bank holidays as only a handful of bank holidays – such as Christmas Day and New Years Day – bring the ‘compensation’ of being paid double the hourly rate.
Nothing better demonstrates the current unfair system of bank holidays in the UK than the comments of financier who writes:
“Its a lovely sunny and warm morning here in Surrey. As one of many who use the long weekend offered by the Bank Holiday to visit friends or family as they live more than a day trip away, or even are working in continental Europe, I fully oppose their deletion.”
Many of us would like the chance to do the same!
@Duncan. Only 40?
Duncan, Maybe money is lost overall in the economy due to these bank holidays but certainly bank holidays are good for Wales, in particular ‘get away’ hotspots like Pembrokeshire.
Today, the A40 West of Carmarthen was choc-a-bloc with cars and motorhomes. Both going Eastwards and Westwards.
This may not be positive in terms of air pollution but if these people are spending money in this part of the world, it’s certainly beneficial for the Welsh economy.
Bank holidays are really only important for public sector workers. Craftsmen, farmers and so on its just another day.
“Today, the A40 West of Carmarthen was choc-a-bloc with cars and motorhomes.”
Hope that makes up for the rest of this wash-out summer.
If anything, that rather proves my point about the nature of the beast. We aren’t ordered off the roads on a given number of days this year to make it easier for lorry drivers, just as we aren’t compelled to use trains to support the rail industry, told to eat in a local restaurant, hemmed into our local high street, forced to pay for television (oh, hang on a minute…).
If you open an ice cream parlour in Tenby, you must absolutely be prepared to take the rough with the smooth if your business is dependent upon good weather. Reporting on Powys and the Brecon Beacons National Park – hardly the most equatorial place on earth – for close to a decade, tourism operators I dealt with often took a sanguine approach to the weather. Otherwise they wouldn’t have slept at night. I can’t imagine that any tourism business in Wales regards balmy bank holidays as crucial to their income.
I got nothing more to add other than to self interestingly defend the lovely time I normally have each bank holiday! Excuse me while I don’t man the fort to get rid of them
Good article though, Duncan.
“People don’t have leave entitlement. Holidays are a privilege, not a right”. Holidays may not be a contractual right for you, Duncan, but they are for me and my union members.
In the US, there’s a slogan – “Unions – the folks who brought you the weekend”. It’s thanks to the campaigning of trade unions that workers get any time off at all. And our unions are unlikely to welcome any proposal to reduce their members’ entitlement to bank holidays.
You may insist that workers must work harder during the recession, even though it was caused by criminally irresponsible bankers (‘ “This recession is not down to me, it’s down to those greedy (merchant) bankers in London”, putting their own interests first and failing to see the part – however small – they can play in bringing about the turnaround ‘). But the really is that we’re NOT “all in this together”, as the ConDem government claims. Why should workers have to sacrifice their hard-won, too-few bank holidays when there’s precious little sacrifice being made by those most responsible for our plight?
I agree with Ian that we may “question the current layout [of bank holidays] over the year but not the principle. When almost all of our competitors have more than we do yet also perform better, maybe the argument is that we do not have enough?” There’s some consensus above that St David’s Day is an obvious candidate for an extra Welsh bank holiday. What other dates might resonate with people in Wales?
Cheers, Gez. First of all, well done to Unison for achieving holiday rights. That’s no small beer, and it bears out your next point about the importance of unions, now and down the years.
I think you’re right, inasmuch as the public and private sectors can be treated differently. I remember Paul O’Shea’s brilliant speech to a Bevan Foundation event last year, making the same point as you. And in many ways what you say is right – why should low wage council workers in Wales lose their jobs over the actions of investment bankers on Wall Street?
But responsibility to prosperity can work in many ways. Why did the international money markets go wrong and drag us down? Well, at its most basic level, it was because bankers were dealing in financial instruments that were far too complex for them to understand, had they bothered to do so. The real tragedy for the rest of us was that various worldwide finance streams involved were too integrated, dragging our savings and pension funds far too close to the casino banking.
The finance markets have a long history of getting in over their heads in this way. Call it hubris, arrogance, or the inevitable consequence of simply making way too much money, but there were similar circumstances three years ago to what happened in 1929, and certainly in 1998 with the collapse of Long Term Capital Management – people disastrously thinking they are more clever than they actually are.
As such, it is likely that this will happen again. How could it not, when the potential returns on leveraged derivatives are so high? My argument, for some time now, has been that we must find ways of insulating ourselves against feeling the consequences of a future repeat episode, that we should look at decoupling the Welsh economy. Call it economic nationalism if you like. But I believe we have to assess who didn’t suffer this time around (or suffered less than the rest of us), and what we can do to learn those lessons.
PS I’m sure you realised, but the bank holiday piece was ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek.
Aren’t paid holidays part of workers’ rights?
The UK Government (and presumably other European governments) recognises a minimum number of paid holidays (5.6 weeks) as a ‘right’ not a privilege.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Employees/Timeoffandholidays/DG_10029788
According to current legislation, fought for and won by workers historically, paid holidays are in fact a right, by law.
Back in 1996 the UK Government was, quite shamefully, the only member-state in the entire EU that objected to paid holidays being qualified as a right under European Law. The legacy today would probably be that earnings in the UK are not very high compared to hours worked, when you measure them to other European economies. We work longer hours, get paid less, and have less holidays. This was one of the points Plaid Cymru made when it argued for a St. David’s Day public holiday. Tony Blair turned it down “because of the impact on the economy”.
Duncan’s point about a repeat episode of the financial crisis is spot on and should be heeded as a warning. The idea that the system can continue with credit easily floating around is surely misguided.
Well done, IL. That’ll learn me to not bother checking my facts before sounding off. Thought I might get caught out sooner or later…
Leaving aside the mischief that informed this piece, there’s a good argument to be had about updating bank holidays, and making them pertinent to Wales, as Gez has suggested. I’ll repeat his question – any other suggestions?
Bearing in mind that while we could do dates that tie in specifically with nationalist icons, such as the death of Llewellyn the Last, celebrated in Cilmeri once a year (forget the date), I would find it just as important to recognise the importance that industry has played in Wales’ development as a nation. Hope that provides some food for thought.
Perhaps a day of mourning for Paul Bodin’s penalty miss in 1993?
Of course, in making a joke, I should be clear that as an attendee at that game, the mourning should be for the fan who died upon being hit by a flare.
business supports bank holidays……………..and a majority supports a bank holiday for St Davids Day………
just to make that clear..
Agree with all of Duncan’s points in response to mine – except (unsurprisingly) his argument that “we should look at decoupling the Welsh economy … economic nationalism if you like”. As should be clear to regular WalesHome readers, I’m a strong supporter of devolution: but not of independence. We should give the Assembly the powers it needs properly to promote the Welsh economy, and to protect Welsh workers from the worst excesses of globalised capital – but that should be articulated within the UK context.
Yes, I had suspected Duncan’s piece was a mickey-take – but I couldn’t miss an opportunity to big-up our unions’ value to workers in Wales (PCS, in my case [and Assembly staffers?], rather than UNISON).
Gez,
Ahhh – union fail. Fulsome apologies.
I think the decouplement (is that a word?) argument is one for a feature all of its own. I thought I had better put my cards on the table before anyone else beat me to it. What I will say at this stage is that guarding Wales against becoming victim to another chain of events by building a new and robust economy is, IMHO, the most pressing issue facing this country right now. I have my own ideas on what the remedy is, but I am more than willing to listen to other views – in fact, I would rather have them.
A crash of this kind will happen again. My father says that making investment decisions by harking back to past performance is rather like driving a car while looking in the rear-view mirror. However, for the reasons I outlined above – that while derivatives are rarely fully understood, the banks and investment industry is hugely incentivised to make use of them because of the wealth potential they promise – I am as certain as I can be that we will see something like this again.
In addition, as I pointed out in a piece I wrote over a year ago for this site, it’s the sales culture that permeates so much of the industry, again with the promise of massive reward, that has helped drive the economy onto the rocks. Bonuses are the symptom of this problem. They can reward hard work, but they clearly need better policing as they have also informed some calamitous decision making.