The NSW government has just passed laws restricting retail opening hours, preventing trading without an exemption on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
The spin in the CT and SMH is positive, saying it will allow retail staff the opportunity to spend more time with their families. However it also means retail workers miss out on the potential to earn significant loadings on these days, and consumers miss out on the chance to shop if that’s how they like to spend their public holidays. I also wonder about the people who don’t have families to spend these days with, or people who are not of a Christian faith who would rather work on Christian holidays in exchange for other days off.
Good news for the ACT though – look forward to plenty of Queanbeyanites trekking over the border for some Boxing Day specials!
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What’s Your opinion?
ACT businesses set to benefit from draconian NSW retail laws
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I work in retail, and..hooray. I’m one of those damn anti-social ones that want to get AWAY from the family at christmas time. (and my friends are starting to get sick of me pratically joining theirs….)
So, bah humbug, bring it on.
dvaey said :
It’s the other side to the Lebanon lifestyle I wouldn’t be too keen about.
emd, if shop owners dont want to be part of the westfield movement they can choose to open up in a quiet local shopping centre and back their own ability to attracked customers. this way they can open the hours that suit them and thier customers
If they’re located in a mall then they often have little choice. Often mall rental agreements require tennants to be open for business whenever the mall was open – and that would be dictated by the big retailers.
I don’t understand the argument that big businesses can afford to stay open and pay loadings on public holidays, but small businesses can’t. Isn’t it a business decision? Surely the profit they make on public holidays justifies the extra staff costs? Or if not, they are making the decision to operate on a loss for that day in order to increase customer loyalty – a decision that smaller businesses could make too.
housebound said :
If being ‘like lebanon’ means that all religious holidays are treated equally, regardless of faith, then why would anyone be against it? Other than the anti-muslim or anti-christian, or anti-religion viewpoints who wont be changed easily anyway.
Quote: “He cited the example of Lebanon where Christian and Muslim public holidays are widely celebrated by members of both faiths.”