Poland bans Sunday trading again

Conservative forces have curbed Polish shoppers’ freedoms, AP reports.

Anew Polish law banning almost all trade on Sundays has taken effect, with large supermarkets and most other retailers shut for the first time since liberal shopping laws were introduced in the 1990s after communism’s collapse.

The law was introduced by leading trade union Solidarity which wants employees to be able to rest and spend time with their families, and was approved by the conservative and pro-Catholic ruling party.

Pro-business opposition parties have decried it as a blow to commercial freedom and warn that tens of thousands of workers could lose their jobs.

The new law at first bans trade two Sundays per month, but steps it up to three Sundays in 2019 and finally all Sundays in 2020, except before the Easter and Christmas holidays.

The change is stirring up a range of emotions in a country where many feel workers are exploited under the liberal regulations of the past years, but many Poles also see consumer freedom as one of the most tangible benefits of the free market era.

In Hungary, another excommunist country, a ban on Sunday trade that was imposed in 2015 was so unpopular that authorities repealed it the next year.

Elsewhere in Europe, however, including Germany and Austria, people have long been accustomed to the day of commercial rest.

Solidarity’s push for the law change found the support of the conservative and pro-Catholic ruling party, Law and Justice.

The influential Catholic church, to which more than 90 per cent of Poles belong, has also welcomed the change.

Seventy-six year-old shopper Barbara Olszewska, saw it as a good thing.

``A family should be together on Sundays,’’ she said..

But pro-business opposition parties warn that the change will lead to a loss of jobs, and in particular hurt students who only have time to work to fund their studies on the weekends.

Even the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions opposes it, arguing that it will just push employees to work longer hours Fridays and Saturdays and that the work will be harder because there will be more customers.

Poles are among the hardestworking citizens in the European Union and some complain that Sundays are sometimes the only days they have free time to shop.

Mateusz Kica, a 29-year-old tram driver in Warsaw, did his weekly shopping early Saturday to avoid the huge crowds he expected later in the day.

He complained that the new law relieved shop employees, but not weekend workers like him. ``This law isn’t really just,’’ Kica said.