In one of his first acts as a Boston City Councillor – he hasn’t even been sworn in yet – Sam Yoon has taken a stand against the state’s ghastly blue laws. Among numerous other problems (that I have detailed here and here), the blue laws – originally written by the Puritans to enforce the Sabbath – remain culturally specific beyond all reason: they require all retail stores to be closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas, regardless of whether the owners, employees, or customers of said retail stores choose to observe either holiday. Yoon’s concern was spurred by the plight of the Super 88 market, which is owned, operated, and patronized largely by persons who celebrate Chinese New Year but not necessarily Thanksgiving or Christmas. The store opened on Thanksgiving (apparently out of ignorance) and on Christmas (out of defiance), and faces criminal penalties as a result.
Said a couple of customers:
“I think it’s unfair to force it to close. It’s a Chinese store,” said Weiqun Li, who traveled to the Herald Street Super 88 from her Shrewsbury home. “If it’s a law it’s probably an unfair law.”
Based on the comments to my previous posts, my viewpoint on the blue laws appears to be a minority one ’round here. But I just can’t see any coherent argument in favor of laws that selectively enforce a single culture, and that do it by restricting liberty. I mean, are Chinese employees of Wal-Mart guaranteed by law the opportunity to celebrate Chinese New Year with their families? Are Jewish employees guaranteed by law the opportunity to observe Yom Kippur by spending the day in synagogue? Super 88 customer Weiqun Li is right: it’s “an unfair law.” It seems to me it is incumbent upon those who back these laws to explain why it’s OK for members of minority religions and cultures to have to fend for themselves, but for American Christians to be able to rely on the state legislature to protect their family time. Doesn’t work for me.
If we’re going to have blue laws for Christmas and Thanksgiving, then we might as well enforce business closings on Sundays too. I mean hell, even though I’m Jewish and (if I were to attend services) would do so on Saturday, I think it’s important that everyone be encouraged to attend church on Sunday.
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Also, I wish I’d known about Super 88 on Christmas. I needed food.
I can see the rationale behind working on Xmas because it’s obviously a religious holiday. But Thanksgiving? That’s a “national”, not tied to any particular religion or creed. So, I think laws keeping places closed on Thanksgiving are fine. And even those regarding Xmas I can understand, since it’s a matter of not making people work on an important day.
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Why are we so hot to make people work 365 freakin’ days a year? Do working class folks not get a break so that we can buy a stick of butter or a 6-pack of Schlitz? I think we can survive one little day without a grocery store. Plan ahead.
But are we talking about a case of protecting workers’ rights or state-imposed moral values? If the state wants to create a law that guarantees workers the right to not work on a religious (or federal) holiday of their choice, then I have no problem with that. Give everyone two or three state-mandated days off over the course of the year. As a Jew, there are holidays that I’d like to know I won’t have to work on. But instead I’m forced to not work Christmas (where I couldn’t care less) and have to take a sick or vacation day on Yom Kippur.
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No, I don’t mind planning ahead when it comes to my grocery shopping, nor do I have any issue with protecting the right of an employee to celebrate holidays without being forced to work. But I take issue when I’m told what holidays should be important to me.
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(It’s also worth noting that while I consider this an interesting debate, it falls far below issues like healthcare, education, affordable housing, etc. on my list of priorities.)
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While we’re on the blue laws, can anyone explain why I can’t buy wine at a grocery store?
The state should not be in the business of telling anyone what holidays should be important to them. Period. Even Thanksgiving, to answer Charley’s point, is “American,” but only if you trace your heritage more to the European settlers and less to the Native Americans who were here first, and for whom Thanksgiving maybe isn’t such a big cause for celebration. And a month ago, when the Super 88 market was tagged for staying open on Thanksgiving, the owner said that the holiday simply wasn’t important either to him or his customers. I continue not to understand why it’s a good idea to force stores to close when they don’t want to. No one HAS to open their store on Thanksgiving, Christmas, or alternate Tuesdays.
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And while I agree with eury that the substance of this debate is obviously less important than health care etc., I actually think it says a lot about one’s philosophy about what government should and should not do. So I think it’s worth discussing and debating. My fundamental starting point is, I guess, basically a libertarian one on this and most other issues: more liberty on balance is good, less liberty on balance is bad. If there are good reasons for restricting liberty, that’s fine – make your case. But other things being equal, liberty should almost always win.
“Freedom” to work 365 days a year, for fear of losing your job? Wow, that’s free, dude.
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“the owner said that the holiday simply wasn’t important either to him or his customers.”
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And you take that at face value? Oh, and by the way, wages and health care aren’t important to him or his customers either. You get my point.
And it’s wrong. Sorry, but you really haven’t addressed my principal argument. Do you think Yoon is wrong to be concerned about the obviously unfair impact of these laws? Yoon, after all, is an approved progressive!
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What you’re basically saying is this: “I don’t want workers to have to work every day of the year just because Wal-Mart wants to stay open, and if giving them Thanksgiving and Christmas is the best I can do, I’ll take it.” That doesn’t work for two reasons: it chooses those two days for all the wrong reasons (that I’ve repeatedly listed), and it doesn’t afford nearly enough workers the same protections (as is obvious if you read the exceptions to the mandatory closing laws). Restaurant workers, convenience store employees, dozens and dozens of others – they can all open any day they want.
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I’ll say it again: if you want to protect workers’ rights, updating 400-year-old laws designed to enforce the Sabbath is about the worst possible way to do it. Wipe the books clean, hold hearings, and write a real law. Don’t give me this Puritan crap.
So in the interest of legal consistency, let’s pair this with a real discussion of how to protect people’s family lives and private non-work time. If we’re going to take something away with one hand, let’s really figure out how to give it back with another.
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BTW, I don’t know Sam Yoon from Adam, and I don’t care who approves of him in general. He can still be wrong.
that others have floated in this thread are a good starting point: a set number (three?) of state-mandated “personal days” that employees can use for whatever holidays are important to them, whether that be Christmas, Yom Kippur, Chinese New Year, whatever. Far better than the current regime. Nor do I have any particular objection to the state declaring that businesses can’t require their employees to work 7 days a week.
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My basic point, so that we’re clear, is not that the state shouldn’t be protecting workers – of course I think it should. My point is that the blue laws don’t really protect workers very well, since that’s not what they were designed to do. What they protect is an outmoded vision of how society ought to work. It is possible both to allow business owners to open when they want – and yes, that is a liberty interest worthy of recognition – AND to protect workers from having to work 24/7/365.
” yes, that is a liberty interest worthy of recognition”
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Why? Based on what laws and principles? And at what societal cost? The minor infringement of this “liberty” on certain days doesn’t cause me to lose much sleep, frankly.
that I’ve already answered that question in several different ways in this thread and others. And I’m not really that concerned about your sleep; I’m more concerned about the business owner who is trying both to serve his community and make a living. The competing interests here can be balanced, but you really do have to admit that there are interests on both sides before we can get anywhere.
A few grocery stores sell wine (and beer), and there is an initiative petition on the ballot to allow more of them to sell wine (but not beer).
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The reason so few do, is that Massachusetts allows any one person or company to hold at most three licenses for retail sale of alcoholic beverages. So if you’re a big chain like Stop & Shop or Shaw’s, you can only sell it in three of your stores statewide.
only because I believe we need to prevent, as often as possible the opportunities people have to buy a 6-pack of Schlitz! Seriously though, if we couch the reasoning in the right terms I don’t think it is offensive to kill two birds with one stone. We can recognize the majority in this country that will celebrate Christmas while simultaneously giving everyone a chance to spend time with family.
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However, I will contradict myself a little bit and say I bristle at anything mandatory so I think a blue law should not enforce mandatory closing nor should it enforce mandatory working. This means that if Whole Foods as a group of volunteers that will work on X-mas or Turkey Day then Whole Foods should be allowed to be open but the workers should have the ability to not work as well; so if Whole Foods gets no volunteers then it cannot make anyone work.
[I]As a Jew, there are holidays that I’d like to know I won’t have to work on. But instead I’m forced to not work Christmas (where I couldn’t care less) and have to take a sick or vacation day on Yom Kippur.[/I]
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That’s it right there. This isn’t about workers rights at all. It’s about religious puritanism from the state.
I think the Blue Laws are foolish, but not because the idea behind them is completely foolish. If the intent is to limit the amount of hours that people are forced to work in low-paying businesses like grocery stores, then I’m all for it. But this can be accomplished in other ways. Namely, enforcing a certain amount of paid vacation days per year.
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If the intent is to make sure that everyone observes the sabbath, or Christmas, or even Thanksgiving, then I think that’s foolish. If there were a guaranteed minimum of paid vacation, Super 88 could give their workers Chinese New Year off, and stay open for Christmas.
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In the meantime, Tom Reilly, and whoever else has the power to do so, should enforce the hell out of these laws. That’s the only way their arbitrariness will ever make the front page. It’s a bad idea to disregard them just because we think they’re stupid. They should be discussed and repealed if that’s what we would like to do.
Much of the discussion on earlier posts, that you interpret as indicating that your point of view is a minority one, focused not on which days are observed, but on the practicality of “voluntary” compliance with a holiday. People debated whether it made sense to penalize employers for opening at all, or whether it’s possible to allow them to open and somehow still prevent them from coercing employees to work on holidays.
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I see this as a separate issue: If you’re going to have holidays enforced somehow by law, be it strict prohibition (as we do for Thanksgiving and Christmas) or by softer means, how much flexibility do you allow about which days are covered? I’m culturally Jewish (non-observant) and grew up mostly in Brookline, and I’m pretty sure that a lot of Jewish owned businesses zoned or licensed for 6 day weeks, close on Saturday and stay open on Sunday. Allowing Super-88 to designate some other holiday more in tune with their business, as a replacement for Christmas, would make just as much sense. If we’re going to have government declared holidays, some sort of flexibility along those lines is necessary in a multicultural society.
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That’s a different issue from whether we should have such holidays, and what legal methods we should use to guide or restrict businesses’ behavior.