Enjoy your holiday — you are paying for it
There are no paid holidays any more than there are free lunches in the company canteen
The Easter holidays are upon us. Many will be enthusiastically taking time off believing they will be enjoying a “paid holiday”. A holiday paid for by their ever-obliging employers, that is. But they are wrong, especially if they work in the private sector. They will in fact be sacrificing salary or wages for the time they spend not working. That is on the simple assumption that there is a consistent relationship between the value they add for their employers and the hours or days spent working. And that therefore they are paid according to the contribution they are expected to make to the output, and so the profitability, of the firm they work for. Wages are not typically charitable contributions. It makes no sense for some employer, the owner of a business with a natural concern for the bottom line, to pay you for time spent on holiday — or weekends off, or when sleeping, or travelling to or from work. They are unlikely to survive the competition if they do not take into account t...
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