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author: liu yuanju

financial columnist, researcher at several think tanks

recently, "this year's 3-day mid-autumn festival holiday needs to be adjusted" has become a hot search on weibo.someone summed it up: work 6 and rest 3, work 3 and rest 2, work 5 and rest 1, work 2 and rest 7, and finally work 5 and rest 1 - a total of 5 weeks of rest were adjusted.netizens complained: "they always rob peter to pay paul during holidays and weekends, patching up seven days, and ruining two weekends with adjusted days off. this time, even five weeks were adjusted. it's a rhythm that makes people lose track."

in fact, whether you remember it clearly or not is not a big problem, just follow the schedule. the key point is not here.

the adjustment leave system is a kind of "mandatory leave"

many people think that the compensatory leave system should be abolished and replaced by a paid annual leave system.

in fact, paid leave has always existed. except for some big cities and large companies where these laws are well enforced, their implementation in many places is worrying.

on the one hand, this is because the supervision of relevant departments is not strong enough, but more importantly, relevant laws and regulations can indeed protect the rights that a worker deserves and ensure that he or she gets paid vacation, but they cannot prevent someone who is more willing to work overtime and sacrifice vacation from getting opportunities for promotion and bonuses, nor can they prevent someone who has a conflict with the company over taking annual leave from being laid off for other reasons.

therefore, under the internal competition in the workplace, no one dares to forcefully ask for annual leave.

the long holiday system for the whole country is equivalent to a certain degree of national economic shutdown. during the long holiday, upstream and downstream industries are on holiday; customers and suppliers are also on holiday. even if enterprises do not take holidays, employees cannot create any value.under this premise, if an enterprise gives its employees a long vacation, the opportunity cost will be minimized, so the enterprise will of course choose to give employees a vacation, thus protecting the rights of workers.

the long holiday system across the country can be seen as a way for the government to replace labor and capital in unified negotiations, that is, when individual workers are not willing enough and the bargaining power of the labor group is low, the government will negotiate on behalf of the labor group. this is in line with china's current social situation.

in 1999, in order to promote consumption, the spring festival, labor day and national day were changed to three days off, and for the first time, a seven-day holiday was adopted. chinese people respect tradition very much, and the seven days of the spring festival are for family reunion. based on china's population migration and urbanization over the past 40 years, most people will return to their hometowns and will not travel. therefore, the only months that can actually travel are may and october.

this system continued until 2008.

in 2008, qingming festival, dragon boat festival and mid-autumn festival were designated as legal holidays. qingming festival, dragon boat festival and mid-autumn festival are known as the four major traditional folk festivals in china along with the spring festival. all traditional holidays have thus become legal holidays.the main purpose of doing this is to enable the general public to better understand and inherit this traditional culture, and enhance national cultural confidence and national cohesion.so, to some extent, the short holiday is a way for working people to promote traditions through their own actions.

another argument for this change is that this split will help disperse the flow of people and give people more time to travel. but in fact, this change has failed in both goals.

the 3-day "short holiday" is not suitable for long-distance travel

if you want to understand why there are so many complaints in public opinion, just put yourself in their shoes and feel it.to put it bluntly, the cost-effectiveness of adjusting the short holiday is too low.

the "price" in "cost-effectiveness" refers to price, cost, and price. specifically, it refers to the price people pay for adjusting their work schedule during the short holiday.including disrupting calculations, continuous working, etc. adjusting the holiday will inevitably lead to continuous working. 5 days of work is hard to endure, and 7 or 8 days of work is not just 2 or 3 days longer, it is much harder to endure psychologically.

but in fact, this is not the most critical factor that affects the cost performance.the more critical factor is the "value for money" in the word "performance", which refers to performance, benefits, and sense of gain. specifically, it refers to the benefits that a short holiday made up of adjusted rest days brings to working people.

since it is a short holiday, the difference from a normal weekend is the word "long". the word "long" means that you can travel and visit relatives. but this "long" has a small "character", which is only three days.

so, what is the difference between three days and seven days in terms of feelings and sense of achievement? in fact, to some extent, this can be quantified. i will try to give an algorithm.

the short holiday is different from the spring festival. it is difficult to leave early the day before the holiday. if you get off work at 5 or 6 o'clock, and if you travel by plane or train, it will take another hour to get to the station or airport, so it is likely that you will not be able to leave on that day. even if you drive yourself, there is a risk of fatigue driving after a day of work and a long drive. then, you can only go on the second day, which is the first day of the short holiday. spend a day on the road, go to the scenic spot or hometown, sleep, go sightseeing or visit relatives and friends on the second day, sleep again and it will be the third day. after noon, you have to go home. in other words, the short holiday is two days of tossing and one day of fun, while the seven-day holiday is two days of tossing and five days of fun.

therefore, the difference between a seven-day holiday and a short holiday is not 7:3, which means it has 4 more days than a short holiday, but 5:1, which means the difference between having one day to play and having 5 days to play. the difference in the sense of gain between a seven-day holiday and a three-day short holiday is not 7:3, but 5:1. the sense of gain from a seven-day holiday is 5 times that of a short holiday.

this is still considering the situation of working people who are not afraid of the hassle and insist on traveling. in fact, because traveling during the short holiday is too troublesome, many people choose not to go anywhere, but go out shopping, have a meal with friends, sing ktv together, or go to the city park to play.this kind of leisure is no different from an ordinary weekend. in this case, their sense of gain during the short holiday is almost zero.

once you understand this algorithm, it is not difficult to understand why people generally complain about the adjustment of short holidays.

three days is still too short. it is not enough to support people's demand for travel or visiting relatives.no one would spend two days on the road to go home to worship their ancestors during the qingming festival, and no one would choose to go back to their hometown for a family reunion during the mid-autumn festival. it is very troublesome to travel, and the cost-effectiveness is very low.

it is not difficult to find that the short holiday has failed to achieve its two goals of promoting consumption and carrying forward traditions.

in fact, this has been observed, and some solutions have been considered. however, since the legal holiday status of the four major traditional folk festivals cannot be shaken, we must find a way to make up a longer holiday to stimulate travel, so the solution we think of is to adjust the holiday over a longer time span.

although this is conducive to travel, the time is still much shorter than seven days. moreover, it involves longer-term adjustments and rest, which will naturally lead to greater complaints.

can the tradition of “may day golden week” be restored?

one way is to increase the number of statutory holidays.

objectively speaking, china's statutory holidays are not low compared to the rest of the world. from this perspective, it seems unnecessary to increase statutory holidays. however, objectively speaking, in terms of total working hours, the average annual working hours per capita in china in 2018 reached 2,100 hours, second only to mexico's 2,225 hours, which is higher than the working hours of other countries. therefore, in this case, it is reasonable to increase holidays.

let’s still use the idea of ​​the country negotiating on behalf of workers. since it is difficult for chinese workers to fight for higher labor rights for themselves, they often have to work overtime and work long hours. then, the country can give more holidays. in the end, working hours and labor hours, in global comparison, reach a reasonable range.

the basis for policy making should be the actual situation, not the theoretical situation. therefore, the fact that chinese people work long hours should be the basis for making vacation policies, not "china already has many statutory holidays."

even if it does not increase, it can still be optimized and adjusted.

the solution is to keep the seven-day may day holiday. may day and national day, one in late spring and the other in early autumn, are both suitable days for travel.there should be long holidays during these two periods. as for the legal holiday status of qingming festival, dragon boat festival and mid-autumn festival, it is not difficult to solve it. just take one day off from the weekend of the week in which they are located. in this way, the holiday scale can be maximized without increasing the legal holidays, while retaining the commemoration of tradition.

in short, the goal of the holiday policy is to work people, for people, not for consumption or tradition. only by putting people first can the holiday system gain universal recognition.

this article is an original article specially commissioned by the phoenix news commentary department and only represents the author's views.

editor: liu jun