More Bank Holidays?

SORRY to rain on your parade. But did you know that wonderful, sunny Bank Holiday we all enjoyed yesterday is the last one this year? Unless, of course, you count Christmas.

From now on it's work, work, work, all the way to the dank and dismal days of year's end. With just the Christmas shopping to cheer us up.

It's not fair, you know. If we lived in France, we would have three more Bank Holidays than the measly eight we get here in Britain.

If we lived in Italy we would get four more - and those lazy Austrians enjoy five more than us with 13.

It doesn't matter that Bank Holidays are usually pretty miserable affairs anyway. If we choose to spend these hallowed days away from the office sitting in a car in a traffic jam on the A64, with the rain, or sun, beating against the windscreen and the kids screaming and fighting in the back seat, then that is our affair.

What matters is that if our Continental cousins can enjoy an average of 10.8 Bank Holidays a year to spend with their family, down the pub, or soaking up the traffic fumes on the Continental equivalent of the Costa del A64, then why can't we, too? What else is Europe for, if not to stand up for our rights?

It's not just Bank Holidays that we should be grumbling about, either. If you combine public or Bank Holidays with the legal minimum annual leave allowed in each country, we workaholic Brits do even worse in comparison with our European neighbours.

In this country (where a loophole means some employers can force their staff to count Bank Holidays as part of their annual leave) the legal minimum number of days off is just 20, compared to 36 in France, 37 in Finland, 38 in Austria - and up to 42 in Italy (depending what sector you work in). The European average is 33.

Add in the 48-hour statutory maximum working week here (the French, apparently, have introduced a 35-hour week) and we are left looking like the worker ants of Europe.

If all this busy-ness meant we bestrode the world economic stage like a colossus, then it just might be worth it. But let's face it, it is not as if our British culture of working until we drop has actually resulted in any great improvements in productivity, is it?

We may be doing OK, but the British economy is hardly about to set the world alight.

Well, the TUC at least has now had enough. On the back of a report highlighting the inequity in European working hours - entitled, with devastating cleverness, Banking On Your Holiday? - the trades union organisation has called for us Brits to be given three more Bank Holidays every year.

It's not only for us poor, downtrodden workers' sake either, insists TUC general secretary John Monks. He is really thinking of the employers all along - because a less tired workforce means a more productive workforce.

"British workers have been put at the bottom of the EU pile," he says. "They need proper time off work as much as their European colleagues. UK workers have the shortest holidays and the lowest productivity in Northern Europe.

"So offering more holidays makes sense for employers too - happier workers are more productive."

Mysteriously, employers have not exactly been falling over themselves in the rush to endorse this call.

"We all like the idea of more time off," says Andrew Palmer, the CBI's deputy regional director for Yorkshire and the Humberside. "But most people would understand that there's no such thing as a free lunch.

"In a fiercely competitive global economy, we do need to be ahead of other countries. We should be very wary of following the labour practices of countries that are less dynamic than we are. It seems odd to talk about taking more time off when manufacturing is in a technical recession and the global economy is in the middle of a slowdown."

Besides, Andrew points out, many people actually enjoy their work and don't want to be told when to take time off.

Which is, undoubtedly, true. You only had to see Darcus Howe in Channel 4's Slave Nation the other day, to realise how completely absorbed in work many Brits have become. It's almost as though some people only feel they have an identity when they are at work.

Their self-worth is defined in terms of their status in the office - and whether they have a phone with more buttons than the person siting next to them.

But just because some people are content to spend their whole lives chained to the desk does not mean we should all be, surely?

Chris Russell, Yorkshire regional organiser of the Transport and General Workers Union, which is backing the TUC's call for more time off, says it is obvious most Brits are being expected to work too hard.

Stress-related illness is on the rise, he says - and, echoing John Monks, he says the performance of the British worker is suffering as a result.

Family life in the UK is also being sacrificed on the altar of the work ethic, he points out. "Particularly with more and more women entering the labour force, employers have got to give serious consideration to letting people have sufficient time with their family," he says.

The TGWU wants to see a 35-hour working week in the UK, in line with France - and more Bank Holidays.

Chris Russell agrees it is an unbearably long slog from the August Bank Holiday to Christmas, without the prospect of a long weekend to brighten it up.

So: three more Bank Holidays it must be. Tony Blair please take note.

But when should we have them? There's one obvious and shining candidate. Yorkshire Day - August 1 - is clearly one of the highlights of the year, and screams to be made into a Bank Holiday. What is more important, nearly 60 per cent of Evening Press readers agree - at least according to a telephone poll we ran on the day itself.

That just leaves two more.

I think the day Maggie was dethroned as Prime Minister deserves to be immortalised for posterity as a national holiday - if only I could remember which day it was.

And then we need a day sometime in November, to break up the chill autumn slog.

It's got to be November 5. Because surely, if that were a national holiday, the city council couldn't ignore the annual commemoration of the city's most infamous son any more?

Fireworks on Knavesmire for all, please.

Updated: 10:19 Tuesday, August 28, 2001