Sunday Trading Laws

[TheDevilWearsPrimark]

Is it just me that thinks this is an antiquated law and should be scrapped?

chanedllina - problem is there are plenty of people who DON'T want to work Sundays - but end up having to because of staff numbers/shit working conditions etc etc

But what about a small business? No way could they keep up with the big chain store if there was all day Sunday opening hours. Not unless they wanted to work all day EVERY day.

If you can't get what you need from the shops current opening hours then you seriously need to have a re-think.

If shops had to start doing all day Sunday opening hours then i think offices/banks etc should follow suit.

MsSparkle - you know one of our two local corner shops is open everyday from 7am-11pm - they don't employ any staff it's just him and his wife, and occasionally his teenage son

You know even before the days of the Sunday trading I remember there were some small corner shops (selling your essentials of bread, milk, fags , etc etc) open on Sundays. Not many admittedly- but if you were desperate you'd find one somewhere (usually - depending on where you lived).

Well we have a small bakery and my dp already works an 11-12 hour day. If he had to do Sundays as well he would be closed down, or dead It's hard enough now trying to keep up with the supermarkets 24 hour opening.

Just to throw a spanner into the works, i think ALL shops should be shut boxing day too.

It bugs the hell out of me to see crowds of people on boxing day spend, spend, spending. We can't just have two days of the year off to spend with family without one of them being taking up people having the need to shop for crap things they don't really need!

I HATE this craze people have where they have to shop, spend, shop, spend 24/7. You have the internet to shop 24/7 so YOU DON'T NEED SUNDAYS TO SHOP ALL DAY AS WELL! Grrrr

I really don't understand why people think we need to shop 7 days a week. There are currently only 2 days in the year when you can't shop at all in main stores (Christmas Day and Easter Sunday). What's the problem??

I don't really get the argument that keyworkers working on Sundays chose their profession, while people working in retail don't have a choice. Of course you have a choice - look for a different job, upskill, if you don't want to work in retail, then don't. If you don't have qualifications for something else, then do something about it.

If I need to buy for the children, I either go in after school or take them on a Sunday morning (coffee/hot choc and cookies in Starbucks whilst waiting for opening time). It's really quite simple.

SoupDragon - what about the poor people having to serve you your coffee in Starbucks? Isn't it a sunday for them too?

oh yes it's just as simple as

"look for a different job, upskill, if you don't want to work in retail, then don't. If you don't have qualifications for something else, then do something about it. "

isn't it

Let me think back, when I was working full time in one shop, if memory serves the full-timers were required to work at least one Sunday a month, and most Saturdays. Most were a bit peeved about working on Sundays, as you got less pay because of the shorter hours. There were very specific people who worked on Sundays, because they wanted to. There was one who had a family, but most of the others were teenagers/students who studied during the week, so preferred working weekends.
Later, when I was doing part-time work as a student in retail, at one place we were allocated particular days of the week that we worked, I think there was a rota for fulltime staff who worked Sundays once a month and that was it.

I think, if you manager is like DoingtheBest's (sorry to take your name in vain), it's a problem with the manager. There are plenty of people who would just want to work sundays (at one stage of my life I was one of them), and then you need (obviously depending on the size of the store) 1 manager/supervisor and possibly a couple of regular workers (mostly to tell Sunday/weekend staff where everything has been moved to).

To the people saying it is not about family time I have given reasons in my previous post why exactly it IS about family time (to those of us with families)

If I work my other other Sunday like I was expected to i would only get to spend time with Ds, Dd and DP twice a month as DP works nights so is not aorund when I get home from work, there are about 2 hours for me to spend with my DS as he is at school.

Do you seriously think that getting the whole family together just twice a month is acceptable? If so i pity the state of your family life, and yes you dont need to go somewhere that has staff working as a family, games, walks, the park etc are all perfectly fine for growing kids.

So those of us with kids that have to work Sundays (as I said before I dont anymore as i decided to opt out as some things are more mportant) Its nice to have a lazy sunday brekkie with them as we dont have to be out the door by 8 to get to work for the early brief (again unpaid) and its nice to get home at a reasonable time to have a fmaily meal together not turning up an hour or 2 beofre the kids go to bed, seriously you think that the shops opening extra are worth missing out on that?

In fact its not just about those of us with kids, I have a girl working with me whose partner works mon-fri 9-6 she works until at least 8:30 3x a week and every saturday, on the weeks she works Sundays she gets a few hours each evening with her partner? Is it worth it?

Yes students would be a great alternative but in my store we dont just want bodies we want people who are actually able to do the job and are reliable, the number of them turning up with hangovers and spending half the day in the loo is amazing.

I really am shocked that people are really thinking that extended sunday hours are really needed, does it hurt you really? you have 6 hours in which to get what you need and in many places now 12 hour opening mon-fri.

Of course you have a choice - look for a different job, upskill, if you don't want to work in retail, then don't. If you don't have qualifications for something else, then do something about it.

Im sorry but that is the argument of someone who doesnt have a clue, I love retail work, but I was employed when there was no sunday trading and no plans for it either (only at crimbo)

I dont see why I should change careers because of one day, I think that the 6 hours is more than enough.

Ah yes boxing day! I work in a store that has no sale (due to what we sell) yet people were still pouring through our door on boxing day at 10 am, its pathetic, these people we aimlessly wandering around as they had lost the art of being together as a family, (hence whenI aske dthem what brought them in it was 'boredom') I dont think we should be encouraging anymore of this.

in 10 years in this particular retailer (and many many members of staff) i have only met 3 people who were happy to work Sundays (obviously others did it or poor people wouldnt be able to shop for new gadgets on a sunday) , so i think that its alot of people really.

true SGM - but you can bet your bottom dollar that most of those families where one of the couple works Sundays would give it up in shot if they could have affordable childcare during the week.

It might work for them in financial terms - but I doubt there's many that want to work on the Sunday - just that because their childcare is free then it means they're actually earning money.

yanbu.

where i live all but the co-op and the spar shop are closed on sunday and on wednesday afternoon.

"because they prefer one parent home with the children than astronomical childcare bills."

that's exactly my point - if they didn't face astronomincal childcare costs then I bet a lot of them would MUCH prefer not to be working evenings/weekends.

I only took my care job (nights) because of the childcare costs issue of a more standard "9-5" Mon-Fri/Sat job.

It was only good for us for the financial reasons.

So I suppose yes it does come down to childcare again...............but not the issue of Sunday/weekend childcare for longer Sunday trading hours.

YABVU
I live in germany, where everything and I mean everything, closes on Saturday evening. You cannot do ANYTHING retail on a Sunday - you are forced to spend family time.

I wouldnt want to go back to the UK way of life. You start off thinking you will put aside a day for the family, but inevitably it gets squashed out by "needing" to go to the shops.

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I remember the relief of Saturday evenings working in retail, knowing that the next day would be easier. Especially as one job had a weird way of working days off out.

Basically you got 2 days off a week, but those 2 days could be Mon/Tues on week 1, then Sat/Sun on week 2, so you might do 10 days straight without a day off. So Sunday hours were very very welcome.

However my last job I worked 4 days on 4 days off, so would find Sunday hours hugely inconvenient. (I was usually working 12 midday to 12 midnight, so I was barely awake by the time shops closed)

Kaloki - your post reminds me about a (tottaly irrelevant to the thread ) run-in (one of many) I had with my manager when I worked nights in a care home.

When I started (not long after the new management took over) there if you worked the "weekend" you worked Friday and Saturday nights. A few months down the line the rotas went up and we noticed that - apart from the night manager who was the only one with "fixed" nights (Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed) our "weekends on" had been changed to Saturday and Sunday nights.

So several of us were expected to work

Friday night one week, then Saturday and Sunday night the next week.

The managers argument was the weekend was "Saturday and Sunday" (which is fair enough as it is) . What she couldn't get her head around was the fact that we only worked for 2 1/4hrs on the Friday - the rest of our hours were on the Saturday - and that it affected our weekend (as we'd spend all day Saturday sleeping).

Thankfully night manager (only reasonable member of senior staff in the home) managed to talk sense into her and the weekends on (for night staff) were changed back to Friday and Saturday nights.