Hi folks,
I hope you had a pleasant holiday. For many people today was the first day after vacation, needless to mention that it was a extraordinarily busy day for some of them.
As you might have heard on the news several weeks ago, some labour unions wanted to implement more (6 weeks instead of 5) statutory holiday per year.
Do you think that this is a good idea/approach? I do not have to be a prophet to forecast that this will not happen too soon in regard of the current political situation on a federal state level and on a national level, but would it be from your point of view a step in the right direction, also taking into account unemployment, deficits and debts? Would such a thing be possible from an entrepreneurial perspective? Tell me your thoughts and sorry for not posting an article for this issue!
Cheers
Dieser Kommentar wurde vom Autor entfernt.
AntwortenLöschenDear Michael, thank you for bringing up this very interesting issue!
AntwortenLöschenIn fact, this topic will most probably affect a lot of us, if anything more specific will happen during the next months/years. On the one hand, I do, of course, see the benefit from the side of the employees having more time off during the year. Being on vacation might mean that people spend more money by either going on holiday or organizing activities as they will probably not be staying at home all day during vacation. The increased amount of activities of one additional week of paid vacation means growing spending and might therefore boost economy while lowering unemployment. Employment rate might also increase due to greater needs of staff because of more weeks of paid vacations and longer absence of employees.
However, beside the advantages that such an implementation might bring, obstacles such as increased spending by companies by higher absence of staff and thus, the need to recruit more employees might weigh much heavier.
In fact, the discussion of such a new law reminds me of the implementation of the 35-hour week in France which was only little effective since job conditions simply changed according to the fewer hours worked per week including the sudden increase of overtime and the concentration on more project-oriented tasks meaning that employees are paid by delivering projects.
To sum up, I, as a future employee, would personally of course appreciate more weeks of paid vacations during the year but at the same time see that such a new law is rather unrealistic due to the before-mentioned barriers. Comparing to other states worldwide, I do think, that 5 weeks are already a good time of paid vacations, currently seeing no clearly urgent need of extending this time frame.
This topic has, as anita said above, advantages as well as disadvantages. firstly, i guess it sounds quite nice to get one more week paid holiday, however, in some businesses this fact might represent a challenge as such an issue is always correlated with high costs and other difficulties. For employees it means on the one hand one more week holiday, but in most cases also one more week where they have to replace a coworker. As one employee is then doing the work for actually 2 employees the whole work process is slowed down....and so on.
AntwortenLöschensince austria is, internationally seen, already ranked very high in regards of weeks of holiday, i do not think that a sixth week is necessary. If the disadvantages would not overweigh, i would say: let's do it!
personally i think, that there exist way more essential and important issues to be discussed (unemployment???!) than introducing one more week of holiday.....
I agree with you guys, I think that one week paid holiday sounds amazing :-)
AntwortenLöschenBut, as it would increase work of labor even further, it would make Austria less competitive and more expensive. Therefore, in the end I think there would be less jobs and higher unemployment, so that those who have a job can have more time off. This is why I believe that it wouldn't be beneficial for our economy.
Hi Michael,
AntwortenLöschenyour question is really very interesting.
Of course it sounds really nice - one more week of holidays per year - one more week of relaxing or going on holidays.
However, nearly nobody thinks about the effects this would have on the economic situation of Austria. It would on the one hand increase the workload of the individual employee as he/she would have to perform the same amount of work in one week less. This could then lead to more people suffering from a burn-out which would result in having less employees at hand.
This is only one fact why one more week of holidays would not be beneficial for the economy. (- in the long run!)
Concluding I can say that it would be of course nice to have one more week off per year, however there is also the economy that has to be considered.