There is a famous story that happened with Levi Eshkol (I think) when he was Prime Minister of Israel in the '60s. People came to Eshkol and were pushing him to establish Israel's economy to function on a five day work week. Levi Eshkol responded saying are you crazy? We can't just start working five days a week! First have the people work 2 days a week and get used that, then we can bump it up to 3 days, and eventually we'll make it up to working five days a week!
I always think of that story when the discussed of the possibility of introducing "long weekends", ie turning Sunday into an official day off of work, comes up.
The biggest push for it seemed to be about four years ago when it was seriously discussed in government and they floated a plan to start slowly with one Sunday off every two months, and then the plan just disappeared into thin air. Well, it has come up again. This time because of CoronaVirus.
According to Ynet, the issue has been raised again, and this time it is supported by the labor union, the Histadrut. According to the plan, there would be 6 long weekends over the course of the year, once every two months. Minister Eli Cohen is pushing the plan again, after having pushed it a few years ago unsuccessfully in light of CoronaVirus wreaking havoc on the economy and the workforce. I am not sure how but Cohen says this plan would shrink unemployment, and that is in addition to the other benefits of a better work-family balance, of not burning out the employees, improved quality of life, boost to the local tourism industry, and putting working parents and their children students in better sync with their vacation days...
This reminds me of the story I posted above. CoronaVirus has done such damage to the economy and workforce, I find it funny to suggest taking days off as a way to help unemployment and to help the workforce. Start working two days a week, then 3 and we'll make it up to five eventually....
But more seriously, I am in favor whenever this comes up. If this is the one positive to come out of CoronaVirus, dayeinu.
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