Sources: El Mercurio and Chile public holidays. Regular readers of this blog will recall that he law that would make Monday, September 17, 2007, a one-off public holiday, was approved by the Chamber of Deputies last week, and was sent to the Senate for ratification, where a vote was supposed to happen yesterday. However, as of this afternoon, the bill is still in commission, and its vote on the Senate floor is now scheduled for August 27.The principle of that one-off public holiday now seems to be a given, and anyone following the local press will see that people have begun to make plans based on the ensuing 5-day holiday. So, why the delay, and what is the outlook for the approbation of the September 17, 2007, a one-off public holiday ?
The issue generating most of the debate and delays, is whether the hours that would have been worked on September 17 should be recuperated on other days. Partisans of compensation (devolución) include President Bachelet, who essentially recommended that the law be passed with, in it, a compensating mechanism, senator and senator Carlos Ominani. Opponents to the idea of compensation include senator Pablo Longueira who went on record saying that he would oppose any attempt to include compensation into the law. As of this afternoon, the mood in the senate commission was to legislate the one-off public holiday, without any stipulated compensation.
Another issue that slowed down the commission work last week, but which has been relatively ignored this week, is the request by many senators, such as Alejandro Navarro that the law include a mechanism to deal once and for all, in a predictable manner, with sandwich days.
Finally, to ensure that the issue got as bogged down as possible, early this week, a group of deputies, introduced another bill declaring a one-off public holiday, on Monday, December 31, 2007 (also a sandwich Monday).
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