Power of "Non-working Days"

Non-working days - Leaves that one takes from work with pay or holidays !

Power to Employee: In a country like India, where family includes your dependent fathers, from generations, having them included in your health benefits is only logical. But it was not so for a few big multinationals (read US based companies, where one's family does not include the parents).
So, when genuine needs of employees needing health insurance for parents showed up and stirred up the HR policies in one of those big US based companies in India, the committee recommended to cut the Leaves or Paid Time Off by 2 days and fund extra premium needs to include parents in the health plan. Employees did not complain about working 2 days extra.

That is the power of Non-working days.

Power to the employer: When economy nose dived, and companies started looking for every possible ways of saving a few bucks and stay afloat, many announced mandatory time off for couple of weeks, during Christmas (when very less work gets done anyway). Way to push off liabilities from the balance sheet and hence making the balance sheet more positive than it would have been with those promised paid hours of no-work !

Why am I remembering those events today ? Well.. because today is a holiday in India. And I can not understand why ?

Good Friday - even in some real Christian countries it is not a holiday. I think it is wastage of a powerful tool like "Non-working Time" !