The great public holiday switcheroo
Workers at giant accounting firm EY were given permission to swap their Labour Day public holiday for a day off on another day that’s culturally significant to them.
With the New Zealand population, and EY’s own workforce, becoming more ethnically and culturally diverse, the accounting firm has taken the step of letting workers write their own private public holiday calendar.
Labour Day in New Zealand commemorates the struggle for an eight-hour working day, but with multiple holy days in many religions, EY decided that its workers should be allowed to take time off in order to celebrate the days that were most important to them.
‘‘We have the option to switch up to two days of public holidays for culturally significant dates to allow for people to celebrate the dates which matter to them and their families,’’ said Jo Ogg, EY’s managing partner for Auckland.
Internal publicity to highlight options for flexible working at EY, which has around 1000 workers, takes place each year in October, the month in which Labour Day falls.
‘‘We have a focus on flexibility during the month of October each year, which is renamed ‘Flextober’ to provide the impetus for people to try different ways of working with their teams,’’ said Ogg.
While New Zealand’s public holidays celebrate either
Christian (Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday) or locally important historic events (Waitangi Day, Anzac Day, Labour Day), there has been an decrease in the proportion of the population which is Christian, and a rise in other religions such as Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam.
There are also growing calls for the Queen’s Birthday public holiday to be switched out for a holiday to commemorate Matariki, the Ma¯ ori New Year.
Labour Day has been taking on more cultural and political significance after many years in which its original significance was largely forgotten.
In an online poll last year, 44 per cent of people said it was ‘‘just another day off work’’, while 9 per cent said it was ‘‘just another day at work’’.
Just 19 per cent saw it as a ‘‘day to remember workers’ conditions a century ago’’, while 28 per cent believed Labour Day was ‘‘pretty hollow considering working conditions today’’.
‘‘We used to work 16-hour days in appalling conditions, and some employers would bring that back in a heartbeat if unions weren’t around to stop them,’’ said Erin Polaczuk, national secretary of the Public Service Association union of government workers.
But the political right have also cottoned on to Labour Day, and now use it to lobby for tax cuts.
David Farrar of the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union issued a Labour Day recruiting call for donors to fund the Taxpayers’ Union.
‘‘Special interests in Wellington are clamouring to spend your taxpayer dollars on their pet projects instead of putting the money back in your pocket,’’ he said.