Forget the other problems caused by the earth’s less than exact orbit around the sun, the real problem with leap year is that (allegedly) no-one is paid for working on the 29th of February.
The Freeday Friday movement wishes to right this 'wrong' by encouraging people to take today off work as a ‘Freeday’ and a petition is said to be in the course of preparation demanding the Government makes 29 February a public holiday.
The argument runs that having 366 days in a year means that one day is ‘extra’. Regrettably for the FreedayFriday supporters it is difficult to make this argument stack up. Unfortunately, it founders on the fact that the number of working and weekend days varies from year to year depending on when the weekend days actually fall. For example, this is the number of working days in these years :-
- 2007 = 255
- 2008 = 254
- 2009 = 253
so as you can see a "non leap year" (2009) has fewer working days than this year! It could be argued though that monthly and annually remunerated workers retire a week or two later because of the leap years during their working lives. Sadly for them also, employment law does not support the proposition that turning up for work on the 29th of February is merely an indication of the goodwill the employee has towards his or her employer and is therfore purely optional.
