Holidays, Leave and Family

Jordan at Just Left has posted on National's recent motions to push for the choice between the Day in Lieu (DIL) or the time and a half provisions that are currently guaranteed to New Zealand workers for working on a public holiday. The arguments It appears that the primary objection people have (where applicable) to the provisions for working on statutory holiday revolve around cost or money. Cost from the perspective that businesses struggle to make ends meet as it is and that the wage bill from a public holiday is a millstone too many (or simply an unnecessary one), cost from the perspective that it is another manifestation of red tape that business owners have to worry about. Granted, business owners or prospective owners have a lot to think about. Employment matters are but one among many matters such as insurance, industry trends, security, overheads, bills, time management or banking, that the owner has to worry about at one point or another. At this point, it is important to realise that the range of issues is a problem only when there are only one or two people running the business and they also employ people. 'Small business' owners have to comply with the same tax, industrial and commercial laws that [comparitively] large businesses have to, however with larger businesses and especially corporate employers there is significant delegation of duties. Specifically, there is a Human Resources department or consultant, who has studied in that field and would normally be experienced in that field. Thus, apart from basic industrial legislation that should be understood by employers (like don't harass your employees), the HR consultant is able to provide advice and guidance when it is required on how to manage employees. It takes a load of the employer's mind and allows them to concentrate on other things. There's absolutely no problem with consulting an accountant or getting them to do the accounts, so it's a little hazy as to why it's OK to skimp on the treatment of employees. Perhaps its just that employees don't have the power to audit one's business. This is not to say of course, that every employer is out to screw their workers. I understand completely that it's a burden, having to worry about how to treat employees, just as it is a burden to understand tax and reporting requirements. My point is that workers take just as much priority (if not more) for careful treatment as does GST. After all, who's going to answer the phone, make that cappucino or fill the boxes full of merchandise? Shouldn't employment advice be on the list as well as tax advice? Cost Currently, the cost to employers of paying someone to work on a public holiday is 250% of their normal hourly rate. This is of course, time and a half for the hours worked (150%), plus a paid day off, to be taken at any time in lieu of the public holiday (100% at normal hourly rate). For 11 public holidays in the year, this means that there are 11 instances per annum where an employer must pay 250% of the wage bill. Accordingly, the annual wage bill for an employee is increased by roughly 7.5%. This calculation assumes however that the employer has been open for 365 days in the year, including Easter Sunday and Christmas Day, where trading restrictions apply. If we assume that the employee has worked on 6 of the days in the year, the increase in wage bill is 4.1%. On Jordan's post, an idea is put forward of spreading the cost throughout the year, that is, increasing the price of goods all year round by a reduced amount to compensate for the increased cost come public holidays. Unfortunately, it looks as though a conservative price rise of 4.1% would be required throughout the year to break even. The obvious reply here is that of course, the government hasn't just put through this legislation. The change made was requiring the payment of time and a half, and most people would already working would be getting at least time one and the day in lieu. Attempts to boil this down into a numbers game fail miserably for a number of reasons: how to actually calculate profit, and the extent to which retailers were actually affected by the change versus how many jumped on the boat because of the lure of more profit and the complexity of profit margins from business to business. Not to mention how many toilet cleaners work on public holidays versus office workers versus baristas, and then: how many 'small-business' scale businesses were actually open for business on public holidays? So, a valiant effort. Close, but no cigar. Whatever the numbers there are a number of concerns Problems Customer traffic, transaction numbers and value must not change from the average day's trading to a public holiday. This means, the number of transactions, turnover and margin that are to be expected from an average day of the year should not differ from those of a public holiday. This is because a higher number of transactions at lower margins or a higher number of transactions at higher margins will produce different profit figures. How is this a problem for public holidays? For the service and retail industries (which are most likely to experience higher transactions and custom during public holidays due to an increased number of consumers off work) , it is unlikely that they will sell vastly different product/service lines (that is, with a vastly different margin to normal) on a public holiday, it is just that they will sell a lot more. I used to work in retail and turnover on a public holiday could be from 33% to 300% times higher than a standard trading day. I don't know what profit margins are like in these industries, but I accept that the increase is not as great as it sounds. In the industry I was in, we couldn't raise prices on a public holiday because all the other stores would scoop us on the deals - so higher turnover was a way to combat being open on a public holiday. In high-er profit industries, the takings from a public holiday become much more significant. These are the larger companies or corporations which can absorb the actual cost of opening, where small businesses would otherwise be forced to shut. This is because of the difference between the profit margins and the actual profits. Solutions National have proffered the idea of choice, whereby an employee can choose whether to have their day in lieu or take the time and a half payment. The debate that has ensued over this seems to me to have largely missed the point. It's not about choice, and it's not about removing 'double-dipping'. It's about making things cheaper. Going from a situation where an employee is guaranteed the day in lieu and time and a half to where the employee is guaranteed a choice BETWEEN the two, pressure will certainly be put on the employee to take the cheaper option (day in lieu) where it suits the employer. Suddenly, the employee is worse off either 100 or 150% in terms of pay/leave accrual. This is an out-and-out attack on what is a long-awaited gift for hard-working New Zealanders - their right to rest on designated public holidays without suffering for it. Never mind that it will alienate workers, it's an obvious line to business owners and another example of wedge politics where National tries to drive a wedge between the different bases of Labour support. Sometimes, it seems as though people forget that a public holiday is meant so that you can spend the day at home with family, not at work. The moaning about the price of a cappucino simply illustrates the decay of traditional social values - bugger staying home, let's go shopping for the sales! Surely, if people want to do something as a family and go out, then either a) the surcharge determines where they go and has been put forward entirely at the retailer's prerogative, or b) the surcharge recognises the sacrifice that has been made by the workers to serve them on that day and their decision to pay the charge depends entirely on their empathy for the workers' plight. Personally, I've been to Baker's Delight on public holidays over the last few, and took the oppotunity to discuss the fact that they charged it and to find out what they thought of it. The workers' responses were quite insightful and under different circumstances could have promoted a spot of organising on behalf of the SFWU. As it was, I didnt, I became the dirty little capitalist and scampered back home to scoff my pizza slice and danish.