Andrew Dickens: We deserve our summer break

The story that keeps getting my goat this week has been the accusation that New Zealanders take too many holidays over the Christmas-January period.  It’s burbled along since the weekend. Business owners, economists, Simon Bridges, and talkback callers all alleging that the country closes down for a month and that’s killing our productivity.  But there’s no proof of that and the allegations seem little better than reckons.  Let’s remember that the rest of the Christian world are also off for Christmas-New Year, so we’re not losing competitiveness over that week.  And the northern hemisphere closes down for August while we’re working our butts off.  Maybe some of the people moaning about the summer break have lost track of reality for most New Zealand workers. The minimum statuary leave for most New Zealanders is 4 weeks after a year of employment. 20 precious days that week out over 12 months.   There are four big school holiday periods that parents need to think about.  For most New Zealanders, a big summer holiday might last until the second week of January and the longer you take over summer the longer you have to work over the rest of the year.  Only a few people casually skive off for January.  The successful business owners who have managers in place. The semi retired. And the superstars whose success during the year grants them privilege - I’m looking at you Mike Hosking. And the other group are the lawyers, partly because courts close down. But while judges have nice summer holidays they’re only allowed a week in Spring during the rest of the year. So the lawyers bugger off to their beautiful baches.  And that’s why lawyers were the most concerned at the dropping of the new Resource Management system this week with a 6 week submission period. It means they’re going to have to work all summer.   Like the rest of us. And that’s why they’re grumpy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.