The Globe reports that eating out on Thanksgiving is all the rage this year. Fancy restaurants like L’Espalier, Pigalle, and Meritage are offering expensive multi-course feasts, and reservations are going fast.
Here’s the owner of Pigalle explaining the situation:
To Orfaly, the decision to be open on Thanksgiving, once the bastion of luxury hotels or quaint New England Inns, was an obvious one. “Thanksgiving week is typically not very strong. If I close it’s even weaker,” he said. “We are going to do well.”
Seems perfectly reasonable. Orfaly wants to open his restaurant on Thanksgiving, and people want to eat there. Win-win.
But for those of you who prefer to go the home-cooked route, just be sure to do all of your shopping in advance. Because, in its infinite wisdom, the all-knowing and beneficent state continues to decree that you may not, shall not, and cannot go to a grocery store on Thanksgiving. Indeed, as recently as 2005, grocery store owners with the temerity to open their doors on Turkey Day found themselves threatened with criminal charges, and on Thanksgiving Day 2006, police descended on a rogue Quincy supermarket and shut it down.
This is an absurd state of affairs, isn’t it? Restaurant-goers are free to indulge their passions on Thanksgiving Day, but home-cookers can’t zip out for the extra can of cranberry sauce necessitated by the last-minute inclusion of Auntie Flo in the day’s festivities?
It’s high time we got rid of these absurd and unfair relics of the Puritan era. Strike a blow for freedom – repeal the blue laws.
Roundup of previous coverage of this issue available here.
Pick another relative.
Auntie Flo comes on her own schedule.
(Ask your wife.)
But I do agree with the sentiment.
and let’s pay employees who work on the handful of holidays (Christmas, July 4th, etc) double time, and pay wait staff full minimum wage (instead of their current few bucks an hour).
<
p>The problem is that there isn’t much balance of power. If the bossman says you’re working this holiday and you’re a waiter or a grocery clerk, it’s awfully hard to say no because there just aren’t many other great prospects. So, if we’re not going to err on the side of letting folks be home with their families, let’s at least make sure we pay those who are stuck working for the man substantially more.
<
p>
<
p>P.S. If you need to run out and buy more food because one more person is showing up at your table, you’re doing Thanksgiving wrong.
in the incident that started this whole thing off – then-AG Tom Reilly’s threatening Whole Foods with criminal sanctions if they stayed open – employees who (voluntarily) agreed to work on Thanksgiving would indeed have been paid double time.
<
p>
If not enough staff agreed to work, what would Whole Foods have done, closed?
<
p>Stores should be closed on all federal and state holidays. Blogs shouldn’t post, newspapers shouldn’t publish, TV news shouldn’t run. All private business should be closed.
<
p>We should celebrate not working or shopping 10 to 20 times a year. When I get gas or a coffee at Dunkin’s on thanksgiving, it’s always immigrants working. Sure they may not have a cultural connection to thanksgiving, but in my mind that’s the problem, not that I can’t get cranberry sauce.
Sure. Or rather, it wouldn’t have opened in the first place. I assume that when the guy said voluntary, he meant voluntary. If you have any contrary evidence, let’s hear it.
Of course he means it. Fine for him.
<
p>But once he does it, Stop and Shop opens, Shaws opens, and there goes your voluntary out the window.
<
p>Ever done temp work? When money gets tight, sometimes you wish you could work a holiday. There are people on hourly wage who would cheerfully volunteer to work 16 hours a day. But we have laws against that sort of thing, for good reason.
<
p>
is why anyone thinks it has much application to the blue laws, as they currently exist in Massachusetts.
<
p>As I note downthread, sure, the current blue laws guarantee that employees of certain stores get Thanksgiving, Christmas, and (I think) January 1 and July 4 off. But (a) what about employees to whom those holidays aren’t very important, but others might be, such as Chinese New Year? And (b) what about the vast majority of retail and other service industry employees who happen to work in establishments that are exempt from the blue laws? Are they less deserving of protection than people who work in grocery stores?
And on Christmas.
<
p>And not any other day.
<
p>You want restaurants to close on Thanksgiving? Fine, I’m with you. Draft the referendum.
my position (fairly obviously, I’d think) is that the state shouldn’t be in the game of telling businesses the days on which they may and may not open their stores. So my referendum would be different.
at it’s finest. By all means – let’s not impede the “progress” of business, even on a day of “Thanksgiving.” Let’s them them do whatever they want, when they want – because this society has only a vested interest in profit, rather than people.
<
p>Although…this doesn’t sound like you, usually. What’s the matter, were you unable to get a can of canned pumpkin or something on Thanksgiving?
<
p>I don’t think having a few non-negotiable holidays is a bad thing for the greater society. Sure – I may have to actually plan ahead (like the old days) but really, what am I losing? In a pinch, I can go to a Store 24. I’d rather see employees have the time off for their families than to relieve my temporary and momentary burden of trying to find canned pumpkin somewhere.
So if the stores open at Midnight on the Friday after Thanksgiving then that’s okay with you because “Retail Stores Closed on Thanksgiving” never mind that the people who work the midnight shift get there before midnight and have to go and get some sleep during Thanksgiving so as to be ready to work.
<
p>Let’s get to a level playing field. If you aren’t allowed to be open on Thanksgiving Day per MA law then how about we require ALL internet companies stop sales to MA residents during those same days. Sounds crazy, but if you want to be fair to retail employees how about we enact regulations that provide a level playing field between brick and mortar stores who actually hire MA residents and the internet only shops that add NOTHING to the MA economy from a jobs and tax perspective.
<
p>So let’s pick a direction and stick with it, but applying rules against companies that actually employ MA residents and not everyone else is crazy. Do you really think the India based customer service reps for the internet only shops receive minimum wage let alone time and a half or better?
The presence of online shopping options makes it easier to order retail stores to close. Tax revenue derived from online purchases is a separate issue.
<
p>”Applying rules against companies” — Do you seriously believe, and are you seriously arguing, that ordering Stop and Shop (for example) to close for ONE day hurts the business? Even if Whole Foods WERE allowed to open, Stop and Shop would be fine. But to your point about fairness, if you tell one to close, you have to tell them all to close. Throwing in non-grocery industries is a separate issue.
<
p>And no, it’s not fine with me that stores open at midnight. But I don’t get to decide.
<
p>
You’re advocating eliminating protections. Those people do deserve expanded protections, only the minimal amount of commerce should transpire on holidays. Yes, the steel mill that costs tens of thousands of dollars to shut down will stay open, so too with hospitals and public transportation, maybe even certain gas stations. But advocating for expanded commerce on holidays doesn’t seem like a very worker friendly policy.
at least you are willing to say that the blue laws are bad because they should go much, much further than they do. Philosophically, I don’t agree with you on blue laws, but what really annoys me is the position that, as they exist right now, the blue laws serve a useful purpose. They don’t – even if you think that they serve as valid worker-protection function, as written they are so vastly underinclusive, both as to who they cover and to what days they apply to, as to be virtually useless. if not actually counterproductive. As I’ve written before,
<
p>
<
p>- Independence Day
<
p>- Thanksgiving
<
p>- Christmas
<
p>Three out of the four are American holidays. OK, blue laws aren’t perfect. But 75% aint bad.
<
p>
and they probably don’t have Christmas off in China. But they have other days off that their populations want to have off. Oh no, they’ve written laws that not everyone agrees with! Throw them out! Everyone must agree to a law for it to be valid!
back in the time when the blue laws were being challenged during the Thanksgiving to Christmas shopping season. Sure, working on Sundays was voluntary, and there were enough workers willing to come in for the time and a half, but for us managers, if we had any expectations of advancing in the company, you worked. It was also a reason why I got out of retail. It’s really nice getting Sat and Sun off. As for holidays and working on them in general, the only people who can count on getting a holiday off are government employees, and pseudo government employees such as financial industry employees. When was the last time you saw a bank or the stock market work on a holiday? If it’s a holiday, then everyone should be off except for public safety employees. Business can just get over it.
If current laws are such that most businesses can operate any day of the year they want to, then what becomes the point of the holiday, any holiday? It becomes little more than that myriad of mostly unknown government proclamations declaring this to be x, y, or z day, that no one but the person who promoted the thing cares about.
Chinese restaurants make a fortune on Christmas.
<
p>My own kids always volunteered to work on Christmas Day because we happen to celebrate Christmas Eve- my son was a movie usher and got triple time!
<
p>Voluntary isn’t always a synonym for coercion.
He means do it or your fired. My only evidence is the many organizing campaigns I’ve worked on where bosses routinely treat low wage service workers like garbage. After all, we’re talking about Whole Foods, a firm that built its market power by destroying coops and whose CEO likened independent democratic employee organizations to herpes.
..but I can think of TWO local markets off the top of my head that ARE open on Thanksgiving, and they do great with people who didn’t buy onions or half-and-half (naming no names).
<
p>Is this just chains?
Also, I find it funny how David gets all Lochner v. New York on us when it comes to Blue Laws, but would probably go nuts if workers were allowed to go back to “voluntarily” working 80 hours a week at $.50 an hour with no bathroom breaks.
Lochner was a constitutional case. Nobody’s arguing that it’s illegal for states to enforce blue laws. I just think it’s a stupid idea.
<
p>To answer PP’s question, the blue laws have been amended and “clarified” so many times that they are now nearly incomprehensible (yet another reason to get rid of them). Probably the markets you are talking about fall within one of the numerous exceptions.
the blue laws have been amended and “clarified” so many times that they are now nearly incomprehensible (yet another reason to get rid of them).
<
p>Engines used to be so simple, a rotor, distributor, carburetor, a few other things, but now they have so many vacuum systems and filters and computers, they’re too complicated! I say just get rid of them! Anything I don’t like or can’t understand must be useless!
Laws should be written in such a way as to provide reasonable notice to those whose activities are governed by them. Why don’t you head on over to the blue laws and see how you make out. M.G.L. ch. 136, ss. 5-6 will get you started. Businesses shouldn’t have to request an opinion from the Attorney General’s office to determine whether or not they are allowed to open their doors on a particular day.
There is a basic principle in engineering: KISS or “keep it simple, stupid”. It means that you should avoid complexity unless you have a good reason for it. Cars have gotten more complex, but they have also become much safer, fuel efficient, more responsive, more comfortable, etc.
<
p>I don’t see that we are getting the same kind of benefits from an increasingly complex web of laws. Cars don’t tend to have parts that are there only because no one bothered to remove them from previous designs, but this happens all the time with laws and regulations.
And the Thanksgiving work laws are safer, more fuel efficient, more responsive, and more comfortable too. How can you not see that they have the same kind of benefits? The legislature has worked hard to make it so important essential workers are working, and also ensure that as many people as possible can have the day off to be together with their families.
I was knocking a bad analogy. I actually made no statement as to whether or not working on Thanksgiving should be legislated. I actually don’t have much problem with retail stores being closed on Thanksgiving.
Sorry. I thought if it was the basic principle of engineering, you meant it was a good analogy, very simple. I still think it is a good analogy – both laws and engines started out simple, and then they were fiddled with and added to in order to make them work better, and then they aren’t simple anymore, but they work better.
Laws are overly complex and often in conflict with each other. There are also many old laws that are no longer relevant or would be considered unconstitutional if enforced. Complex law are also much harder to understand and enforce than simple ones.
assure workers get the day off. I get the feeling you’ve never worked retail.
These laws are relics from hundreds of years ago. They’ve been amended within an inch of their lives, but their origins remains pretty clear if you go back and read them.
<
p>As they are now, it is indeed true that employees in certain types of stores are guaranteed by the state to have Thanksgiving off. But what about people who work in establishments exempted from the blue laws – that is to say, restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations, TV and radio stations, real estate agencies, libraries, art galleries, museums, bakeries, video rental stores, etc. etc. etc.? Are they less deserving of protection than people who work in grocery stores?
What’s your point? Because these laws don’t protect everyone in every industry, we should protect no one? Come on. Whatever the original intent, these laws now protect your typical minimum wage worker from having to work on two holidays all year.
<
p>No, they emphatically do not do that. They only protect a very small subset of retail employees at a particular kind of store. Those employees may or may not be “minimum wage workers” – I don’t know. I do know that restaurant employees, who make less than minimum wage, have no protection.
<
p>
<
p>My point is that if you think that the blue laws, as they current exist in Massachusetts, are striking a great blow for worker’s rights, you’re kidding yourself. I’ve already argued this point upthread.
This thread is remarkably similar to those relating to the hack-o-rama holidays, especially Evacuation Day, that come up each March.
<
p>Defending these silly laws on this ground seems to me to trivialize the notion of worker protection in the first place.
If we’re serious about worker protection, let’s have a serious worker protection regime. Let’s not keep in place goofy Puritan-era laws that ignore most workers and don’t protect them very much, under the guise of worker protection.
<
p>So? Retirement in your 60s is a relic from hundreds of years ago. I see nothing wrong with ensuring an occasional slowdown to the consumerist cacophony of America. And as stomv said, anyone Thanksgiving shopping on that day really shouldn’t be trusted with the meal.
By government fiat? I do. YMMV.
I suppose our “mileage” does vary, considering every year I see front-page complaints about this. Would that every poorly thought-out law in Massachusetts gets such treatment.
By all means, list additional bad laws that should be eliminated.
maybe we could follow that up with the mechanic’s lien statute
Blue laws were perfectly thought-out — they kept Sunday as a special day, which was their raison d’etre. I’d prefer the term “culturally obsolete”. I’m just pointing out that we see this rant every year, and I’m starting to suspect at least one editor was caught short on Thanksgiving when he forgot to pull the gizzards out of the turkey before throwing it in the oven.
<
p>Bad laws to be eliminated I’ll cover it in another post, because the list is growing too long.
my objection to the laws requiring grocery stores to close on Thanksgiving has nothing to do with personal shopping-related inconvenience. It has to do with the absurdity (at best) of the Attorney General of this state sending threatening letters to grocery stores, and of the police being called to shut down a Quincy store that had no idea it was transgressing by being open. Surely these august law enforcement personnel have more important things to do.
… the same way about the culturally neutral banking holidays that happen in Canada and Europe? I don’t necessarily mind a mandated slowdown in concept, I just dislike the Government asserting a cultural preference when it does such a mandate. Indeed, I wish there were some kind of mandate in the case of days for voting. I don’t think it’s practical to make voting day a mandate, but if voting were two or three days long I do think there should be a mandate for one of the three days to be determined by the employer, though. I think voting is an excellent example where a slowdown is actually demonstrably in the state’s interest.
is we should get rid of the mandated days off and replace them with mandated double-time for working any national or state holidays. We should also ban employers from forcing employees to work on any of those major holidays, at least save emergency services like police, fire and hospital staff (and even there, fair systems should be used to determine who gets ‘forced’ to work). If businesses have trouble getting workers staffed at double-time, they can either close or make their employees a better offer.
<
p>In the end, I think we’ll get the same result: Many of these stores will simply decide to close. However, at least it will be a policy that trades consistency across most low-wage sectors of the economy for added benefits to those workers, and doesn’t just take away their rights without getting anything back in return (and in fact, in many ways, would expand upon their rights).
Have the federal laws changed about overtime?
<
p>Here’s the way the were all the time I was growing up:
<
p>Overtime: 1.5 x hourly rate (time-and-a-half) More than 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week
<
p>Holiday time: 3 x hourly rate (triple-time) more than 12 hours in one day or any hours worked on a Sunday or holiday.
<
p>Maybe these were state, rather than federal laws. I was in Md (in the early 70s) when the above was true. I know they were mandatory, because I know my employers would not have paid me a penny more than forced to by law.
I generally agree with your notion that these Blue Laws should be eliminated, David, but I think your arguments for this aren’t convincing. If I’m restating your argument correctly, you say that they should be eliminated because: (1) they are relics of the Puritan era and (2) because it is unfair to selectively enforce a single culture (since these holidays have Christian roots).
<
p>However, neither of these arguments is convincing. First, as several others have pointed out, that these laws were enacted for one purpose (get people to church, or whatever) is pretty much irrelevant if the reason they are still on the books and actively enforced is completely different. This sort of thing happens all the time, where laws on the books are used for purposes that were not the original intent of the law (and it is probably a good thing that laws change with the times). If they no longer serve any purpose but are still on the books, then they aren’t enforced and we don’t have to worry about them.
<
p>The second point isn’t very convincing either. There are plenty of laws that would be suspect if we considered this sort of thing to be selectively enforcing a single culture. (For example, time-and-a-half laws wage laws on Sundays.) Indeed, the entire idea of having national holidays would appear suspect, since why should these be holidays and not (for example) Chinese New Year? Why do federal and state government agencies close on these days? Etc.
<
p>I think these two arguments are linked in that they assume that the intent of the current law is to either carry on Puritan mores or enforce a particular culture, when in fact they are on the books in large part because of lobbying by unions. So we should treat it as such, and not use what seem to me to be red herring arguments against the law.
<
p>The better argument is to say that these laws should be eliminated because they improperly inhibit business owners from opening when they want — but also that because they currently serve as a benefit for workers (a guaranteed day off), we need to compensate for this legal change by requiring 2x wages for employees for hours worked on these holidays.
Your final paragraph is my basic position. I have no problem with requiring extra wages. The other stuff – Puritan era, underinclusiveness, etc., is kind of a sideshow, though I think an interesting one to talk about, and one that strengthens my position by (among other things) pointing out the weaknesses in the usual justifications for these laws.
<
p>Though I would note that your argument – “they improperly inhibit business owners from opening when they want” – does beg the question a bit. Why is such a law “improper”? I have answers to that, but it’s late so I’m not going to write them up again (I believe I’ve done so in the past), and I’d be interested in hearing yours.
<
p>Actually, I think these two arguments about Puritans and cultural under-inclusiveness weaken your argument, particularly around BMG’ers (which is probably why your position, as you’ve presented it, is in the minority here). These are the sorts of arguments business groups would skillfully use to sound kinda liberal/progressive on this issue but really are just employed to justify the elimination of these laws without having to pay additional wages in return.
<
p>As far as the “improper” argument goes, I’d extend and revise my remarks by arguing that this blue law is both under- and over-inclusive (though in a way having nothing to do with culture or religion). First, it is under-inclusive in that we still allow certain smaller businesses to open on the holidays while not allowing the larger ones to do so. I somewhat see the rationale here — they may be individually owned and operated, so the risk of workers being forced to work is lessened — but ultimately this law just hurts the consumer by limiting market choices only to small stores.
<
p>Second, it is over-inclusive in that some workers may actually want to work in order to make more money. By providing double-time pay, it serves as a sort of compromise. If a business sees it as too much to pay, then they can close and all workers get the day off anyway. If the business decided to open, then those employees working benefit by pocketing extra cash. Also, if you paid 2x wages, I bet you’d get more people wanting to work on the holiday for the extra pay, thus freeing others to not work if they so pleased. It’s something at least worth trying.
Also, if you paid 2x wages, I bet you’d get more people wanting to work on the holiday for the extra pay, thus freeing others to not work if they so pleased.
<
p>Why is that a good thing? “Hi Mom, I ain’t coming out for Thanksgiving this year, cause I can make an extra day’s pay if I work it instead.” Even time and a half doesn’t make much sense. It rewards the people that degrade the culture, and costs the people who visit their families, which actually has a value to society.
<
p>I can’t answer that for every individual, and neither can anyone else. Some people do not want to work on holidays, for certain. Other, however, might see this as a good way to make extra cash on holidays they don’t particularly care about. Or maybe they are fine with working during the day and having family time at night.
<
p>Who knows — but my point is that by allowing stores to open, along with 2x wage requirements (and perhaps additional protections for those who do not want to work on the holidays), allows greater flexibility for workers themselves to decide what they want to do. That’s why this would be a good thing.
when people want to work on holidays. If we do any wage tyranny at all, we should enforce that people don’t get paid on holidays at all, 0x wages, so that only the people who really want to work decide to work, and no one is enticed into working on a holiday by being paid for it.
<
p>Giving people enticing options and luring them away from important cultural family and social rituals is not a good thing. We can’t enforce that they have Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends, but we shouldn’t put up any obstacles.
Yes, yes – I’ve made that argument repeatedly as well. But if you read the commentary on this thread (as well as several others over the years on this topic), you will find that argument, as well as your over-inclusiveness argument, to be unpersuasive to a lot of folks here. So be it. We take the “big tent” approach here. 🙂
I have no problem with requiring extra wages.
<
p>By government fiat? Why not let businesses set their own wages based on their need? I never understood the time-and-a-half thing, though I think Hoyapaul figured it out for me: unions.
Personally, I’ve always felt that Saturday pay and Sunday pay should be treated the same — 1.25, 1.5, whatever.
<
p>Firstly, “the weekend” has modern connotation, far more in this Commonwealth than “the sabbath” so far as I can tell. Not a whole lot of folks are limiting their efforts on Sunday to church and prayer.
<
p>Secondly, there is a not-insignificant number of Jews in Massachusetts, and their sabbath is in fact on Saturday.
<
p>
<
p>Given these two things, why not treat Saturday and Sunday alike?
The Jewish Sabbath starts Friday. And, uh, the point is that there is to be no work at all, not that work should earn you time and a half. It’s really interesting that David thinks its so wrong for the government to force stores to close by ‘government fiat’ but he’s all for a government fiat requiring time-and-a-half. Seems like he’s more interested in offending religion than any principle about government authority.
is same-sex reproduction. How do you feel about that, John?
I’m asking why you have “no problem” with a government fiat requiring extra pay on Sundays and holidays. Do you even see the contradiction?
in talking further with you, if you’re who this loony post strongly suggests that you are. So … let’s clear that up first, mkay?