When shops stayed closed on Boxing Day

WARRINGTON North MP Helen Jones recalled the days when shops stayed shut on Boxing Day during a Petitions Committee debate at Westminster.
People stayed at home with their family, the sales started in January and…nobody starved to death, the world did not run out of cheap televisions and the country did not run out of winter coats and boots at reduced prices, she said.
“All the evidence shows that poorly paid retail workers are being exploited to fuel a national obsession – a debt-fuelled shopping binge that, in the end, does no one any real good.”
The MP was speaking about a consultation the Petitions Committee had undertaken on Boxing Day trading and how people were refused holiday in November and December, and in one case from October to the end of the year.
She said: “This means that people in the sector arrive at Christmas very tired. They now often work late on Christmas Eve to prepare for Boxing Day. They arrive home to their families exhausted, long after the rest of us have begun our celebrations, and are then expected to be in work again on Boxing Day.
“They must be in work again on Boxing Day with many people expected to be in work by 7 o’clock. There is little public transport, so there are stories of people having to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning to get to work.”
Ms Jones explained that extra pay was no longer the norm for people working on Boxing Day and that new contracts require people to work on that day – no choice exists now for many workers.  This despite some store managers reporting that they are “less busy than on a usual Sunday.”
The shopworkers union Usdaw reported that 92 per cent of respondents to their consultation did not want to work on Boxing Day, but 78 per cent felt that they were pressured to.
Helen Jones went on to highlight the price paid by communities for BoxingDay opening:
She said: “If more shops open on Boxing Day, there needs to be more of other services, such as waste collection, emergency services must be on duty; and there is more pressure on transport to run as normal. There is a spiral effect when more and more people are made to work the bank holiday. There is a price for families. People lose the time with their children or their parents, and other members of the family are very often pressed into service looking after children, meaning that they cannot make plans for the day. The real impact is on the poorly paid retail workers and their families.
“Of course, there are exceptions. A number of workers in the emergency services – nurses, paramedics and police – have responded to our consultation, and they all accept that they may have to work on Boxing Day because it is a matter of life and death. Shopping is not.  Good King Wenceslas did not look out and see the queue for the next sale.
“Contrary to what we might think, Christmas does not begin the day after bonfire night, or whenever the commercial frenzy sets off.  It begins on the 25th. The 26th is the second day of Christmas – St Stephen’s day.
“Boxing Day is originally when servants were given their presents and time off. It is coming to something when in 21st-century Britain, we cannot give people the rights that indentured servants had hundreds of years ago. The situation could be vastly improved by a simple amendment to legislation to put Boxing Day on the same footing as Christmas Day
and Easter Sunday when large store cannot open. We could do that.”