Vacations

We all probably need a vacation from vacations.

For years, stray voices, mainly from the private sector, have urged government to review the number of vacations officially specified. We probably have among the highest number of non-working holidays in the world.

The high number of non-working holidays cuts deeply into our national productivity. It imposes high costs on employers and is probably a hindrance to higher job creation.

To begin with, our productivity rates are not at all remarkable. In fact, we very likely have a lower-tier productivity rate. That is a disincentive to investments, on top of high energy costs, poor logistics and that eternal curse of official corruption.

Nor are our wages, pitted against a low productivity rate, eminently affordable. It might be hard for wage workers to imagine this: we have a comparatively higher wage scale than many of our neighbors we are competing with for investments.

Of course, in the face of a notoriously high food price regime, local wages do not gift our workers with impressive purchasing power. Just last week, NEDA was heckled widely on social media for a study that suggested that P64 was adequate to purchase food for a day.

The number of holidays may be blamed for the hollowing out of our industries. Large industrial plants cannot be turned on and off like lightbulbs to accommodate the holidays.

At any rate, few politicians dared to legislate some sanity into our abundant holiday schedule. Our workers love the holidays. Only irredeemable Scrooges, for instance, choose to work during the grossly extended Christmas holidays.

In this light, some credit should go to Senate President Francis Escudero for instructing the chamber’s technical staff to do a thorough review of our non-working holidays. That instruction was seconded by Sen. Cynthia Villar, who was never impressed by the need to be popular anyway.

If we add up the national non-working holidays, add in the local holidays declared by executive fiat, we will arrive at an astounding number. We lose about month of work each year.

The loss of working days takes its toll among our schoolchildren. I have not found a DepEd study that tallies the number of schooldays lost because of national and local holidays. Add to the holidays the classroom contact time lost because of inclement weather or because of those infernal jeepney strikes that happen too often.

Let us not forget, election day in our horrendously short electoral cycles, is a holiday as well. This may be because the schools are used as voting centers.

Little wonder that our students are performing poorly in the international assessments. Less classroom contact time might be the unspoken culprit here after all.

Neither have I encountered any account by a serious historian that explains why it came to be that we have such a high number of non-working holidays. I did read some account of European festivals and holidays that argued that these special days were conceived to keep peasants happy in between the cycles of agricultural work.

In addition to the prescribed non-working holidays and local holidays to celebrate the founding of towns, we have de facto holidays to commemorate fiestas. We have de facto holidays for many other reasons as well. When Manny Pacquiao was at the top of this game, virtual holidays happened when people abandoned work to watch the fights.

When Gloria Arroyo was president, the Fridays before or the Mondays after a holiday that falls on a weekend were declared alternative non-working holidays. This made sure no off days were missed.

The program was justified as “holiday economics.” If we had long weekends, people would go out on extended vacations and spend money in the countryside – or so we thought. I have not seen an economic study that examined “holiday economics.” Nor did this decision improve Arroyo’s popularity ratings.

I am not sure how far Senator Escudero would go with the review of holidays he ordered. The best thing that could happen is for legislation to be produced rationalizing the holiday calendar.

We have a holiday for Jose Rizal and another one that centered around Andres Bonifacio. We celebrate the defeat of our fledgling army in the Bataan Peninsula with a holiday – even if this was a costly strategic blunder. It is difficult for an outsider to understand why we have a National Heroes Day and a Day of Valor.

Until recently, the uprising in Edsa was commemorated as a national holiday – even if its legacy remains a matter of debate. For a while, there was a clamor to elevate the anniversary of Edsa Dos to holiday status.

During the reign of Marcos Sr., his birthday was a holiday – although it was called Barangay Day. In Quezon City and Quezon Province, the birth anniversary of Manuel L. Quezon is a holiday.

Added to the holidays celebrating historical moments, we have added Chinese New Year and two important Islamic feasts to the holiday calendar. Perhaps we can trade off reducing some of the Catholic holidays for cutting away the Chinese and Muslim holidays.

Technically, the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is a working week. But by tradition, no one works on those days. To compound it, schools and offices shut down by mid-December to informally create the longest Christmas holiday anywhere.

I am looking forward to the recommendations of the review of holidays that Senator Escudero ordered.