“Here we go again!” With those words, The Times introduced its editorial of Tuesday, 5 July 1994 about ‘Summer hours’. That was not so exceptional, because almost a year earlier to the day, on July 20 1993, it had also had another editorial on ‘Summer heat and work schedules’.
Along comes 2010, and ‘here we go again’, with the business sector once again starting its periodic bleating about the issue, and the workers’ unions justifiably arguing their stances.
So isn’t it perhaps time for everyone to be absolutely clear about the facts of the problem? Let’s take a good look at some of them.
Fact No. 1: while some businesses want to, if possible, carry out business operations 24 hours a day – and in so doing, care absolutely nothing about the interests of others – others, with different values and notions of quality time, and quality of life, will argue totally differently.
There is a time for work, and there is a time for non-work. Period. And the two poles – capital on the one side and labour on the other (as we were taught at university in our Industrial Relations Law studies) – will only agree at some point in between if they themselves (and no government legislator) are both ready to give up some things. And both of them, and again with no government intervention whatever, must simply agree on what’s what.
Fact No. 2: Yes, work does pile up in some government entities during the summer months. But is it, for example, because annual holiday entitlements are badly organised, and left to concentrate in a period when summer hours are being worked? Or is it simply because adequate complementing is absent? It is not exactly unknown for managements, in both the public service and the private sector, to resist bringing up staff complements to what is really required in both quantity and quality terms, thus invariably bringing about drops in service standards, including towards the business sector.
Fact No. 3: Malta’s Mediterranean heat in the sweltering months of July to September will slow down productivity everywhere, unless special conditions (ACs everywhere, better shift structures, flexitime, etc.) are brought into the equation. And who will pay for those? The business sector? The workers? Or the taxpayers?
Fact No. 4: While there may factually be individual needs for different working times in certain public entities, at the same time, things on this front are simply not what they were, say, 10 or 20 years ago. Governments and trade unions have managed – discussing round the table as absolute equals – to structure public employees’ working times in a manner that provides for more hours to be worked in winter, and less in summer.
Fact No. 5: It is not the number of hours worked, or when such hours are worked, that determine quality and quantity of output or service; but what is done during actual working hours with the personnel available. What would – just to throw an idea – be the attitude of the populace generally, and the business sector in particular, if, for example, all public officials were to start work at 9am all year round, and then finish later in the day? It simply does not follow that, simply because that may be the norm in some countries, then that is what the Maltese reality needs.
This writer worked for over 40 years in a sector where three half-days a week in winter were off, and similarly five half-days a week in summer, but Saturday working was the norm throughout the whole year. And it took a long and bitter battle to convince employers that overtime worked should – on simple justice terms – be paid for. But productivity there, in both quality and quantity terms, was invariably very high in every single office. That was an era when nobody would dream that public employees should not work half-days in summer simply because others do not work summer hours, or to satisfy their own needs.
To look at such an argument grossly suggests an attitude of wanting others to adapt to what you think is right or needed, and not vice-versa. There’s no way out of this non-issue other than for (a) To stop trying to put pressure on the government, and (b) To simply sit down and talk about it with the unions.
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