Celebrate DALDA, not overwork & overtime

It’s that time of the year again – May 2, Day After Labour Day for All (DALDA) – the one day where every working person used to get back to work after taking a break from work to celebrate, well, work. That is, until DALDA was established to drive home the point that work is not, as was being peddled, the be-all and end-all to life. May Day was about firming up ‘8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest, 8 hours of recreation‘. DALDA emphasises that very point, in case folks thought work was something ‘sacred’, like the blind worship of the so-called ‘Protestant work ethic‘.

The ‘for all’ bit in DALDA is important. Despite being part of the ‘working class’, salaried professionals somehow still think ‘workers’ to be other people, usually wearing grubby ‘labourer’ clothes, while they are ’employees’, a class that also works but magically avoids being deemed ‘working class’. Lest we forget, Labour Day and DALDA commemorate victories and pushbacks against fellow humans who have been keen to take advantage of those who function on a need-to-work(-for-a-living) basis. So, May Day and DALDA try to remind employers not to drive employees to overwork, as well as to not make work a virtuous dogma. Of course, DALDA’s job is, above all, to make those dreaded Tuesday mornings – deadlier than Monday mornings – a little more bearable.