10 December 2009

The state owns your shop at Easter

That's what opposing Easter trading is saying. Quite simply, it isn't your shop during Easter, and unproductive petty fascist goons will go around, at your expense, to catch you committing the dastardly deed of opening for business, paying employees and selling to willing customers.

It is disgusting, but telling of what MPs believe small businesses deserve the freedom to choose, and which ones think that this religious based public holiday is special enough that people should be prosecuted for trying to make a living.

So shame on Labour and the Greens for showing themselves up for being the petty fascist little anti-capitalists that they are.

Kudos to ACT and surprisingly Peter Dunne and Jim Anderton for actually wanting to let businesses choose. Surprised given Dunne and Anderton's previous Christian and unionist tendencies.

Kudos to Tariana Turia, Pita Sharples and Te Ururoa Flavell for supporting freedom, brickbats for Rahui Katene and the absent Hone Harawira.

However, brickbats to John Key for not making this National Party policy. For had it been so, this ridiculous victimless crime would be about to be consigned to history. Particular brickbats to busybodies Shane Ardern, Bill English, Phil Heatley, Sam Lotu-Liga, Tim Macindoe, Eric Roy, Katrina Shanks and Jonathan Young. How dare any of you claim to be "pro-business".

If you don't think a shop should be open on ANY particular day then you can do three things:
1. Don't shop there. Ever.
2. Use freedom of speech to ask others to boycott the shop.
3. Buy the shop.

Instead you choose to use force. For shame.

3 comments:

Richard McGrath said...

Scott, I think Neanderton voted against it according to the Labour Party blog.

Richard

Oswald Bastable said...

The same ones who want these holidays enforced for shopworkers seem to have no problem with all us 'essential service' types having to work!

In fact, I'm sure they would insist upon it!

ZenTiger said...

Not all the same ones, Oswald. I grew up in a family where every second Christmas or so my father would be rostered on, and that was the way life was.

So I am personally deeply appreciative of people who work on public holidays in those essential services.

Also, as I've said on previous posts - one should not assume that because I argue passionately for the cultural and traditional (and for a few, religious) value of keeping a designated day a public holiday, that doesn't extend to using force.

My only concern about providing the freedom to shop and the freedom for managers to demand their workers work on those days, is the worker has the genuine freedom to say no.

Some 10,000 workers a year die in Chinese mines. They have apparently freely consented to work in those conditions.

In NZ, safety regulations and enforced penalties mean that businesses do not have the freedom to offer the same working conditions as China. You might want to phrase that at "the state owns your safety regulations", and not just at Easter but 365 days a year.

To a lesser extent, freedom to have a day off as shop worker isn't so clear cut to me.

Where trading laws are amended to allow owners choice, corresponding protections or compensations must be available to the worker, if not already.

My biggest gripe about this issue is the actual preservation of the status of public holiday, and not the unfair (and sometimes illogical) restrictions on trading.