This idea is wrong on so many levels, but I’ll attempt to list them.
- It businesses cost money to stay open and pay their staff stat holiday pay, which is taxable.
- Businesses are unlikely to hire new staff to work stat holidays, which would incur more employment taxes.
- Current staff would be “strongly encouraged” to work Christmas.
- If they protest, then they “aren’t a team player,” “person X has kids,” “you’re single, so you don’t what else are you going to do,” “you’re not religious, are you?”
- Sunday shopping was supposed to take up the slack and offer jobs to the unemployed. Didn’t work out that way.
- People for whom part-time retail is one of a number of jobs they have to make ends meet deserve at least one day off a year to rest. It has nothing to do with religion.
- Having one day off a year that doesn’t entail shopping does in fact make us civilized. Consumption and gluttony are not hallmarks of sophistication.
- In Ontario, the Liberals enacted “Family Day” as a day in bleak February for people to be with their kin. (I think it was more a cynical election ploy, but I digress.) Great! Wonderful! So now we’re being greedy in wanting to keep Christmas Day(or to be secular about it, December 25) a day off to be with our families?
- If we’re like Rae and dislike our families, we can take the day off and be with friends, or volunteer at shelter, or simply rest. Not work. Not produce. Not consume.
- Remember that this does not apply to banks, government, offices, and other white-collar middle-class employers. This is largely non-unionized service: restaurants, cafes, shops, bars, and so on.
I’m sure there are many more arguments to be made.
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