A day of national strike for keeping shops closed on holidays has been held today, the day of Corpus Domini, in Poland, by the members of the trade section of the trade-union Solidarnosc. The shopkeepers, forced even today, a day that has always been a holiday in Poland, to open their shops, warned their customers that they intend to check every item by hand, writing down the barcodes, which could remarkably slow down the normal operation of the checkout counters. The strike organisers ask for approval of the prohibition to open the shops on Sundays and on the major national and religious holidays (1st January, Easter, May 1st and 3rd, Corpus Domini, All Saints’ Day, 11th November and Christmas). According to the shopkeepers, forced to work when they would like to “be entitled to spend their holidays with their families”, the obligation to work on religious holidays too “is a serious limitation on the freedom of a wide group of workers, despite the equality of all citizens being guaranteed by the Constitution”.
