A petition demanding that the government stops people having to work on Boxing Day has now reached 100,000 signatures. That’s pretty impressive, you have to admit. Another 64 million and you’ll have the whole country on board. But would you really want to?
The main aim appears to be to stop shops opening in order to give workers a day off. That’s fair enough, I suppose, even though I suspect many millions, never mind 100,000, people will be fighting their way through the sales. I assume the same people who signed the petition want all shops closed, including supermarkets and garages.
While we are at it, let’s give doctors and nurses the day off too, not to mention care workers. The latter group, who are paid an absolute pittance, can be excused caring for the sick and the old, leaving them in bed for an extra day in the hope that they might survive until the day after. The same goes for our armed forces because all the MOD civil servants won’t be pushing pieces of paper around or counting beans on Boxing Day, so who needs them?
We certainly won’t go to the pub on Boxing Day, or to the football where those poor players will have to turn out, many of whom will have travelled for an overnight stay on Christmas Day. And let’s not watch telly or listen to the radio, just in case someone is presenting ‘live’, which many will be.
I jest, of course, but only just.
We, the Great British Public, have decided in election after election that workers’ rights come very low in our pecking order, especially if we ourselves are doing okay. The large companies who open on Boxing Day know there is money to be made from, frankly, gullible shoppers who don’t seem to realise that equal or even better bargains are available on the internet, negating the need for spending hours fighting through the crowds to save £10 on that £1000 telly. Well, it takes all sorts. And it is odd that we only care about workers’ rights on Boxing Day and not for the rest of the year.
Morrisons, for example, removed the weekend premium payment for staff when the national minimum wage was increased and rebadged and there was no public outcry about that. Nor is there with the likes of Asda for whom you must work on one day at the weekend as part of your contract and there is no additional renumeration for so doing. But when the same people are expected to work on Boxing Day, as they are expected to do on all bank holidays every year bar two, there’s a petition. And what ever you do, don’t buy the Daily Mail on Boxing Day. Just think of those poor journalists being forced to peddle even more right wing lies and filth at the most wonderful time of the year.
If I was appointed King tomorrow, I’d make it law that everyone who works on a weekend or on a bank holiday gets double time – maybe even quadruple time at Christmas. This is unlikely to happen and with the Tory government you have elected (nothing to do with me, guv) you have endorsed a system where the workers are very low in our priorities. Thatcher wouldn’t have wanted to have it any other way.
