There can never be too many holidays.
In these stressful times when people are working more and more, holidays are particularly important, which is the reason employees look forward to them with joy. But, when they finally arrive, they are always too short, and people are forced to get back to work in seemingly no time at all. It’s no wonder, therefore, that many say new holidays should be added to the calendar, reports Večernji List on January 2, 2018.
This is especially true for the beginning of each new year. The New Year’s celebrations usually last until the early hours of the morning, and many people spend 1 January recuperating, so one additional day of rest would come in handy for them to be able to return to their normal rhythm.
While Croatia is still considering adding an extra day of rest at the beginning of the year, some of Croatia’s neighbours have already done so. For example, people in Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina do not work on 2 January. Moreover, International Labour Day, 1 May, is celebrated with two non-working days. Bosnia and Herzegovina has gone a step further, so if one of these holidays falls on a weekend, employees get an additional free day the following week.
The President of the Independent Croatian Trade Unions, Krešimir Sever, supports the idea of adding a holiday. “It would be a good thing for 2 January to be declared a holiday. There are always those who point out how many non-working days there are in Croatia due to different holidays, even though we aren’t any different from the European average. Many employers advocate that people should work even more due to the country’s economic and social situation and that the number of holidays should even be reduced, or that the number of hours of work in a week should be increased. These are liberalistic aspirations which assess the economy only through the prism of money and capital, and not through the prism of humans. Their philosophy is that people exist to create capital, and not that capital and money exist to make people feel better,” said Sever, adding that employers see workers as equipment rather than as humans.
“Everyone knows that the purpose of man’s existence is not just to work. Man doesn’t live to work, but works to live, meaning that we need to respect all the other dimensions of personality related to the family, rest, recreation, leisure, sleep… Therefore, each country needs to establish a good balance between the time spent working and the time spent in relaxation with family and friends. It is essential to have decent working hours, decent time off, and also different holidays during which people do not work. All that time is important for the worker’s recovery, both physically and psychologically. Rested workers can do much more and better work, and at the same time, they are more loyal. Also, exhaustion also results in illnesses and injuries at work,” said Sever, adding that workers in Croatia are among the top in the EU by the number of hours worked in a year.
Translated from Večernji List.
