Bahrain has decided to follow the UAE in changing its weekend to Friday and Saturday. It is thus abandoning a decades-old tradition of a half or full day off on Thursday. Will other Gulf states, including the Kingdom, now follow suit?
There is a sound argument for doing so. Given the Saturday-Sunday weekend in most of the rest of the world, the Thursday break has effectively meant that there were only three days in the week when international business could be carried out. Foreign embassies, including many in the Kingdom also stuck to the Saturday-Sunday break. It could be reasonably argued that it need not be the Muslim and Arab world that makes the adjustment. However, between Muslim and Christian holy days, there is Saturday and no one is yet proposing a three-day weekend.
Besides, the treatment of Thursday as part of our weekend is very recent. The only day off was normally a Friday. Thursday rather crept in as time off. Initially, people left the office early, then went home at midday and finally the whole working day was abandoned. Governments eventually formalized these arrangements for their own civil servants. Many private businesses, however, did not give their employees more than the extra half-day off and a few no extra time at all. Thus such people continued to work a six-day week. There would seem to be a good chance that those states which follow the example of the UAE and Bahrain will have private sector workers who finally find themselves enjoying a five-day week just as state-sector employees. There seems far less chance of businesses asking their employees to continue to work the sixth day if that is a Saturday when most of the rest of the world is enjoying a break.
In making the change, the Bahraini authorities are in fact going against the findings of a consultation exercise they undertook, the result of which was that many people wanted things to stay the same. Among the concerns expressed was that the change would have an impact on Friday mosque attendance. It seems there is little evidence to suggest that before Thursday sneaked in to become a part of our weekend, attendance at Friday prayers was in the least affected because it was preceded by a working day. There is also a concern that if employers decide to embrace Saturday as part of the weekend, they will expect their staff to take a proportionate drop in pay. While this may on the face of it be reasonable, it is perhaps both unfair and shortsighted. Workers who have decent amounts of time off are likely to be more dedicated and productive. Cutting their salaries would be mean and also counterproductive. Hopefully this is a cost that Bahraini and UAE employers are themselves prepared to bear, even though the total cost may make a significant difference to their corporate bottom lines.
The big question of course must now be whether Saudi Arabia will also switch. In a world shrunk by the Internet, the pressure to do so will be considerable but the issue clearly deserves wide initial consultation.
