Sunday is Not a Day Off!

The JPost reported, here, that support is growing to make Sunday part of the weekend. To compensate for the lost time work people will have to work longer hours during the week.

Personally, [I think] I am opposed to the idea. I don't know how long other people are working now but I already work until 7 PM. If Sunday becomes part of the weekend and the other workdays get longer that would make my day even longer. The other option is to make Friday, currently a day off for many people, into a part-time workday. Since the Sabbath starts at sundown, even people who work on Friday only work half a day. So we'd have Sunday off but work longer hours M-Th and half a day Friday. No thanks.

If the goal of this plan is to create a four day work week, I think I could support it. Lawyers probably work at least 50 hours a week now. If the plan is to cut that down, what's to be against. However, for certain fields like law, the new regime might have little to no effect. In a business like law, clients' demands directly impact the hours the lawyers work. So absent a change in clients' expectations, lawyers will have to work the same amount. Furthermore, if work must get done over the weekend, for Sabbath observant people, it will have to be done on Sunday. It is very demoralizing to be working alone in an empty office on the weekend.

For kids who are in school Sunday through Friday, if Sunday becomes part of the weekend and teachers are off then we will have one day less instruction for children but one more day for family bonding. But if the parents need to work on Sunday they will need to make child care arrangements in lieu of school. Maybe I wouldn't mind having Sunday off if the teachers didn't!

There are other implications to this plan.
Retailers or shop-owners that work on Friday may see revenues decrease because many of their regular shoppers are working Friday mornings. People will do their pre-Sabbath shopping closer to their workplaces and markets like Machane Yehuda in Jerusalem may suffer. Saturday nights will become rowdier as people will have Sunday to sleep-in if the workweek starts on Monday. Retail workers who must work on Sundays will resent everyone else who is off on that day. There will still be no weekend for them.

One of the rationales to making Sunday a day off is to bring Israel in line with the rest of the world. But in France Saturday is a workday and in Muslim countries Friday is a day off. So let's assume it means to be in line with America where Sunday is a day off. Because of the time difference (Israel is 7-8 hours ahead of NY but 10-11 hours ahead of LA), giving Sundays off will just cut down on the head start Israelis have on their counterparts in America but it will not eliminate it. Even Israelis who work only half a day Friday will be on their way home before people start working in America. So there is only so much that Israel can be in line with "the rest of the world."

Another rationale is to create a day where Israelis can go to public places to relax and have fun which will create more opportunities for intermingling between people from different socio-economic and religious backgrounds. Besides the attempt at social engineering that irks me, generally, the religious communities will probably not embrace the idea and will keep Sunday as a regular school day like they do in America. They do this because first, they believe that kids (and adults) need to learn Torah every day and second, they don't want to intermingle with the rest of society. So as far as the goal is to integrate the religious groups into mainstream society it won't work.

And another thing. The Cabinet recently agreed to extend Daylight Savings Time in the summer months. Part of the reason is to save electricity and to avoid having people driving home in the dark when more accidents take place. But if the workday gets longer, won't that at least negate the latter point? And in the winter time, will people be using more electricity than otherwise?

For an interview with Prof. Avi Ben-Bassat, former Director General of Israel's Ministry of Finance, see here.

For other articles discussing alternative workweeks, see: Should Thursday Be the New Friday? The Environmental and Economic Pluses of the 4-Day Workweek by Lynne Peeples, The Four Day Work Week: Sixteen Reasons Why This Might Be an Idea Whose Time Has Come by Aaron Newton, Why A Four-Day Work Week Doesn't Work by Tara Weiss, and the response to that article Forbes misses the point of the 4-day work week, How Thursday Became the New Friday by Katie Hafner about Fridays on American college campuses.