[First filed: Nov 23, 2010 @ 9:32]
As we hurtle into the future weekends and public holidays are becoming a mess.
Public servants or sufficiently senior members of large private business can expect not to work on most weekends.
But the leisure activities of the fortunate ones require many other people to be working. Someone has to show them around the prospective investment property, bring them a coffee, and tell them they look great in those cargo pants.
The fortunate ones also like to get bonus days off when a public holiday falls on a weekend. But for a huge chunk of the population days off are something they’re only notionally aware of and extra bonus ones make it hard to pay the rent.
Which means when it’s a really important public day like Christmas, as opposed to the vast majority of made up ones no one really gives a rat’s arse about, we now have a conflict.
Do we want people working on the important Christmas Day to get penalty rates of pay for the hardship? Or those working two days later on the public holiday monday which they would have been working anyway?
The ABC reports that Katy Gallagher is now wrestling with this dilemma. One suspects only the lack of an option that will please everyone is stopping her from leaping for the exit already.
UPDATE: Ms Gallagher has announced that she’s adding an extra public holiday on Christmas Day and deferring structural reform to be someone else’s problem in six years time.