The first vote on new legislation in the 19th Knesset was initiated as a joint effort between Yesh Atid’s Rabbi Dov Lipman, Jewish Home’s Naftali Bennett, and surprisingly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Easily passing the vote, the Knesset decided that Sundays would now be an official day off from work.
MK Rabbi Lipman said, “I missed having a day off like in America, so I’m proud to have introduced this legislation. Now I’ll be able to go to baseball games like I used to.”
Lipman was surprised to learn that MKs don’t actually work on Thursdays, Fridays and of course, Shabbat, thus with Sundays off, his work week dropped down to a mere three days. Also, he discovered that baseball isn’t as popular in Israel as it is in America, so he won’t be going to as many Sunday games as he planned.
In order to make up for the lost Sunday hours, two additional hours of work have been added on to the regular Monday through Thursday workday schedule, which means Israelis will now be at work for at least 10 hours a day, 4 days a week, plus at least half a day on Friday.
Economists, looking a little deeper into the effects of the legislation are now concerned that the law of diminishing returns was overlooked, and that the average Israeli who is not a programmer, will be unable to maintain his or her efforts, concentration and productivity for the 10 hours needed, and that actual productivity time will still continue to hover at the 6 hour mark each day.
Furthermore, the new 10 hour day will now also require the addition of a dinner break, extending the actual work day to 11 hours, and psychologists expect that it may also place a psychological toll on other family members.
In homes where both spouses work, those households are expected to incur addtional overhead with the need to hire babysitters or place their children in eveningcare centers. Furthermore, studies have shown that children who are raised by strangers, might end up like Kibbutz children who were forcibly raised away from their parents during the early years of the State.
Until this legislation passed, working on Sundays had been giving Israelis a competitive edge over other global economies, by giving Israelis a day’s head start in the work week.
The loss of the head start, the non-increase in daily productivity, and the deterioration of the family unit are expected to negatively impact the economy and the country.
But, as proponants of the Sunday-Off plan repeatedly told us, it will make us just like all other nations.
Presumably they were referring to Greece.
A Freilichen Purim.
