Confiscating workers’ precious time off
The new centrist administration’s budgeting compromises were bound to draw complaints from both left and right even without canceling a religious holiday
Like most European nations, Denmark has shirked its share of the NATO budget, contributing only about 1.3 percent instead of the pledged 2 percent. But Putin shocked Parliament into action earlier this year, prompting nearly unanimous support for meeting the target. By 2033, that is. The new “SVM” administration—the Social Democrats, Venstre (the Liberal Party), and the Moderates—wants to speed up the mobilization a little, to 2030. And it found a convenient way to finance the new timetable, which will cost DKK 4.5 billion ($642 million).
Announcing their plan for the government on December 14, the three party leaders proposed abolishing an official holiday (DK), Great Prayer Day, which is observed on the fourth Friday after Easter. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen asked everyone to contribute one extra working day in order to bolster national security and partially offset the labor shortage, which had received much attention in the election campaign. An earlier Social Democratic administration suggested something similar in 2012, and it was promptly shot down.
Tampering with the merry month of May
Denmark has several holidays in the spring—the five-day Easter weekend, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Constitution Day, May Day—and Great Prayer Day is the least important in the Christian calendar. It’s not even observed anywhere else. It was established in the seventeenth century as a replacement for many minor holy days for fasting, penance, and prayer. Although most Danes consider themselves ethically Christians and remain tax-paying members of the Folkekirke (the state-run Lutheran Church), they are famously lax in their formal religious observance.
It’s true that families have some traditions associated with the day, conceded Frederiksen. They eat warm wheat buns the evening before, and they often hold confirmation parties that weekend. But there are several alternative party dates in the spring months. Danes have more paid holidays than almost everywhere else, besides a minimum of five weeks’ paid vacation. Dumping a holiday that isn’t based on any biblical event is preferable to raising taxes, went the explanation. With this stratagem, we are “getting off easily,” said Frederiksen. The change would take effect in 2024.
“What we’re asking Danes to do is to work one day more so that we can more quickly meet our international defense and security obligations.”
—Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen
Hold on, the press and the public realized, does this really mean we all have to work an extra day for nothing? Aren’t paid holidays stipulated in collective bargaining agreements and employment contracts? The trade unions won’t take this assault on the country’s vaunted work-life balance lying down. They’re already gearing up with demands to meet the inflationary rise in the cost of living.
Oops, talk about penitence!
In an interview four days later, the three party leaders were asked about the plan again. Of course people will be paid (DK) for going to work, they said, each of them in turn. “We haven’t considered changing that,” said Lars Løkke Rasmussen. The reversal was scarcely remarked in news reports.
But that’s still not acceptable for many people. Mostly because of the social tradition of family gatherings. Priests and churchgoers object for religious reasons. Pernille Vermund of the New Right party threatened to send the decision to a popular referendum. The left wing cited the much-discussed epidemic of stress: When the healthcare and social services staff have already been overworked during the pandemic and suffered heavy attrition, this is not the time to ask people to work even more. Employers, on the other hand, supported the proposal.
Bookkeeping sleight of hand
Others wonder, what’s the connection between military defense and abolishing a holiday anyway? Apparently that the tax revenue from one working day matches the amount needed to accelerate defense spending by three years. Administrations often explain changes in the annual budget as financing one item by taking from another. But it’s an arbitrary connection; additional money for defense or anything else comes from the overall budget, not from debiting another specific item.
Tinkering with any number of accounting entries could produce the same result. The administration could refrain from cutting the top tax bracket, for example, the left-wing parties were quick to point out, especially at a time with rising inequality. So the Great Prayer Day solution is a sort of technocratic rationalization, or national security was a pretext for mitigating the labor shortage. Reducing the length of the defense buildup from 11 years to eight is also arbitrary; Putin could do a lot of damage before the decade is out.
The bitter pills of centrism
And if people will be paid for working on Great Prayer Day, then the neat financing formula no longer pencils out. The increased revenue will be partly offset by additional wages to public employees. The net gain from increased personal income tax and corporate tax isn’t easy to predict to begin with. Some people will take the day off anyway, or the unions will demand a compensatory vacation day. The CEPOS think tank estimates (DK) that the real gain will be around DKK 3 billion.
It’s an axiom of the welfare state that, once granted, benefits can’t be “reformed” without an outcry of protest. The same thing happened with the administration’s plan to cut the higher education stipend (the most generous in the world in a country where tuition is free) from six years to five. Others feel betrayed by reductions in the early retirement program. The new administration has a slight majority to enact whatever it wants, but when Parliament opens for business after the holidays, it remains to be seen how many reforms it can brazen out.
Thanks for reading! Here’s wishing you all a Happy New Year!
I think cancelling this public holiday is pretty reasonable. Especially the first part of the year is fragmented by many holidays.