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Controversy in FranceIn Switzerland too, “every holiday generates costs” in millions
The French government wants to remove two holidays for the good of public finances. These questions have also arisen with us.
The proposal to remove two holidays in France resonates with Swiss debates.
Tamedia/Adrian MoserEaster Monday and commemoration of May 8: Go, at work, the French! The proposal to sweeten two holidays on Tuesday, Prime Minister François Bayrou, had a number of politicians and citizens of France choke. The government’s goal is to relieve public finances, but how does it work, exactly? Because simply making people work two more days does not remove any expenditure from the state.
Experts have already looked into the issue and the impacts are indirect. “Each holiday that falls during the week represents a loss of 0.06 GDP point,” says an economist, quoted by BFMTV. This represents 1.75 billion euros per day for the economy. But for the state, it is something else and there, the calculations are tough. This 1.75 billion euros represents the value of what is produced that day. Then, companies sell and make profits, the state then collects VAT and taxes. Clearly, the state budget is favored by a surplus of revenue.
One more day, less activity
Switzerland has also asked these questions. There, it was not a debate to remove a public holiday, but to add an additional one. The people voted in 1993 to make August 1, a national holiday. The initiative had been accepted at 83.8% despite the opposition of employers’ circles. “We are opposed to the payment of salary during August 1. We quantified this increase at around 500 million francs, “said a member of the Central Union of Employers’ Associations at RTS.
More recently, the National Council had agreed to create a new national holiday on September 12, the founding day of modern Switzerland. But the Council of States had flowed it. “An additional holiday generates costs,” argued the federal councilor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, articulating the figure of 600 million francs in economic consequences per holiday.
The output of making us work
The calculations are delicate. Because if when you work, you work; When you have leave, you don’t do anything. Finally, you can very well larver on your sofa, but often people take advantage of public holidays to do activities, tourism, shopping. In short, they spend. And if, instead, we locked them at work, it’s also all that of economic dynamism that we deprive, as well as recipes for the State. Especially since, in the case of France, the idea is to make people work one day when they were paid without working. They will therefore not earn a penny more to spend at another time.
