Our forebears struggled hard for the right to a work-life balance. But now our leisure time is under unparalleled assault. It’s time to renew the fight
When they are under attack, or celebrating a big birthday, trade unions sometimes like to remind us about the historic fights they have won: holidays, sick pay and the big one, the weekend.
The weekend was the best of the battles, because the victory was the most audacious. It makes me swell with pride – albeit of the most hypothetical kind (somehow I doubt the National Union of Journalists freelance chapel had much input). Sick pay, one feels, would have been won eventually, by the arc of progress. Likewise, holiday pay: sooner or later, measures to recognise our shared humanity would have sprung into being with or without a workers’ solidarity movement. Two full days out of seven given over to leisure, to conviviality, not as a favour but as a right, however: this was a new kind of empowerment.
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