It's 'Community Day' time. Again.
In the best Groundhog Day tradition, the TUC has taken a day off from arguing for seizing the commanding heights of the economy and worrying about deaths in custody (yes, really) to banging the drum for another bank holiday, as noted before here and here.
This time there is a 'business case' for it, although given it was written in August I may have missed it last time round. Timing, it would seem, is everything:
"Meanwhile, the Treasury’s roundup of independent economic forecasts suggests that the 2.5 per cent Gross Domestic Product growth that we enjoyed in 2007 will fall to 1.6 per cent in 2008 and 1.4 per cent in 2009 before bouncing back up to 2.3 per cent in 2010".
Hindsight is always 20-20, of course, but there is more, much more to mock:
"Employers with poor holiday entitlements are also see (sic) likely to see some improvement in their workers’ attendance. For time-poor employees in particular, the introduction of a new public holiday is likely to lead to a small increase in health and a slight drop in absenteeism. More recent academic work suggests that every extra day of holiday may decrease absence by 0.05 days per person. personnel benefits would help to offset the costs to businesses that do not gain directly from the increase in trade".
Yup, that's 1/20th of a day's fewer sickies that might offset the day off. Brilliant.
This time there is a 'business case' for it, although given it was written in August I may have missed it last time round. Timing, it would seem, is everything:
"Meanwhile, the Treasury’s roundup of independent economic forecasts suggests that the 2.5 per cent Gross Domestic Product growth that we enjoyed in 2007 will fall to 1.6 per cent in 2008 and 1.4 per cent in 2009 before bouncing back up to 2.3 per cent in 2010".
Hindsight is always 20-20, of course, but there is more, much more to mock:
"Employers with poor holiday entitlements are also see (sic) likely to see some improvement in their workers’ attendance. For time-poor employees in particular, the introduction of a new public holiday is likely to lead to a small increase in health and a slight drop in absenteeism. More recent academic work suggests that every extra day of holiday may decrease absence by 0.05 days per person. personnel benefits would help to offset the costs to businesses that do not gain directly from the increase in trade".
Yup, that's 1/20th of a day's fewer sickies that might offset the day off. Brilliant.
Labels: idiots, Unions, Workplace
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on Monday, October 27, 2008 at 8:13 am.
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As it happens, I think an extra bank holiday in winter would be beneficial - but it should be somewhere in late November.
The aim being to give most people an extra day off work for xmas shopping, and try to relieve some of the pressures in the shops in the few remaining weekends prior to xmas.
It could also potentially act as an informal "start" for the xmas season and hence maybe spare us the horror of xmas adverts in October (unlikely though).
Maybe we can nick one of the cluster of Easter bank holidays and use that?
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