Saturday morning
Neil Sinclair
There is a simple answer to our national malaise, a panacea so breathtaking in its simplicity, a remedy so gentle in its side effects, that I feel I must rush it into print before 10,000 other people have the same idea. As a nation, we must return to work on Saturday mornings. Do I hear you cry: .'What is the point ? Denis Healey's tax men will take the reward away from us.' There is an answer to that, too. All earnings derived from working on Saturday mornings shall be tax-free. Do you remember the days, not so long ago, when all working people were expected to turn out on Saturday mornings? It was, for most workers, the nicest day of the week.
The four hours seemed infinitely shorter than the usual eight (a statistician writes: in fact, 100 per cent shorter than the • usual eight) and those four hours were usually classified under a wonderful system called *overtime'. 'Overtime' was then an arrangement whereby workers who had completed .a fair week's work for a fair week's PO volunteered to labour several hours more In exchange for their earnings per hour being slightly increased, say one and a half times the hourly P* rate. This became known as
'hour and a half'. Of course, this system later became more sophisticated. Men who had not worked what any reasonable person would call a week's work found that their unions could negotiate successfully to have 'overtime' paid to them for that time which would normally have been classified as Ordinary hours.
But the real beauty of Saturday morning working, certainly among my workmates on a steel-erecting gang in the Scottish Highlands during the early 1960s, was that Saturday was then a most pleasurable day. For four hours we would happily erect distillery warehouses; and we would be Paid, even after being taxed, a figure approaching that which we were paid for a full day's work. More importantly—yes, really—Saturday morning working tailed off the week, and it was customary for those engaged in all forms of manual or heavy work to adjourn, after twelve o'clock, to the local bar where, over 'a half and a halr—a half-gill of whisky and a half-pint of beer chaser—we would discuss the week Which had just passed. (Those who finished their work on Friday nights never had this Pleasure. For them it was straight home.) There is no doubt, certainly not in my experience, that good work was done on
Saturday mornings. Indeed, if anything, people worked harder on Saturday mornings. There was not the same inclination to dodge, to break off work for trivial reasons. We knew there were four hours to do. Four hours, in manual working terms, is not a long time. Eight hours, in manual working terms, is a fairly long time. Going back to working on Saturday might also get home to people in this country a more important fact : that it is only by working harder, and that also means working longer, that we are going to increase, or even maintain, our standard of living. It might even cause us to• doubt the idea that you can work less, be paid more, and still grow better off every year. If we told ourselves that the only way we were going to be better off, in the short term, was by working for an extra four hours on Saturday mornings, then the idea might take root on a permanent basis. What do we have to lose? Production is bound to rise. Orders would surely be delivered more quickly. Workers are certain to be paid more—especially if their Saturday morning earnings are tax-free. Who could Object to such a scheme, apart from lazy men whose object is to reduce the working week to such a point that more than half of it will in future be classified as 'overtime' ?
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