I think you kind of answered why it’s a good reason to scrap the trading hours, it’s the busiest day of the week because everyone is squeezed into 6 hours.
Even Scotland has longer opening hours on a Sunday (kind of ironic as it was Scottish MP’s that voted against in England opening longer)
As Pluk has said above if business are struggling to recruit as most are at the minute, this usually drives wages and benefits up not down.
I work most Sundays as do a lot of people, it’s not about been bored it’s about growing the economy and by abolishing these out of date laws, it would in one very quick and easy move result in more spending in the high street, the exact area that will start to struggle first.
Without wanting to turn this into the Sunday trading laws thread, that's an over simplification and just not the case.
There is more than enough capacity in both food and non-food on Sunday without an extension of the hours (retail provision in this country is actually over capacity in general). In food it's the busiest day of the week for convenience, not superstores. There are plenty of options already available for people to shop.
The slice of the pie is the same. People don't spend more when stores are open longer to the point where the last few years some chains have actually reduced hours. That is a fact. In Scotland most supers trade 9-18 (not all) and it mainly just spreads the same sales over longer hours. One store I know went from 8am - 8pm on a Saturday to 6am - 11pm in the space of 6 years, same result. This happened with Boxing day, it took money from convenience and Dec 27th so most chains are now rolling this back.
We saw this with the carrier bag charge, all considered it and talked about it for years, but were waiting for a competitor to make the first move before the government made it law. Opening hours have been increased (and are actually decreasing slightly at the moment). If a competitor does it, you then have to not loose your slice of the same pie.
To combat the cost of doing so, contracts are getting worse. Premiums for Sunday's, Saturday's and Bank holidays mostly gone. Night premium from 10pm to 6am now rolled back to midnight to 5am in some cases. Sundays and Bank Holidays from optional to mandatory. Hourly rate has gone up, at the expense of shift premiums as people are now forced to work it rather than have the choice. We never used to struggle to cover bank hols or Sundays when they were optional with shift premiums and I've worked in places where we had to devise systems to share them out fairly because demand was so high. Now people just leave because they find themselves always having the thin end of the stick, with no extra pay, working late into the night, all weekend, not seeing their families, friends or being able to do their Uni work.
Pensions have been destroyed, as
@pluk said, Safeway used to offer Saturday premium, they also had an excellent pension scheme. Over the last decade and half, Morrisons got rid of the lot. Safeway contracts now gone and those people have seen their pension scheme downgraded 3 times since 2005.
If the events of the last few weeks has tought us anything it should be that this old fashioned trickle down deregulation stuff is a falacy. Millions of unfilled vacancies yet wages are still rising below inflation as businesses just can't afford it. Like yourself, I too have just worked all weekend and although weekends have always been factored in to what I do for a living, I like many do have children who are not at school on the weekend who I am partial to wanting to spend at least some time with. But the reality for most people who work for me is that they are working more unsociable hours than ever before, on less pay with downgraded pension provisions.
If they wanted to deregulate to stimulate growth in our industry, they should be looking at HFSS legislation not Sunday trading laws. But rather than looking at what businesses actually want, we have a government that seem to want to use the politics of the 1980's to solve the problems of the 2020's. The government standing by and doing little hasn't helped the railways, the energy market or housing market has it? To add insult to injury, a number of Tories blamed the very markets they are saying we should all trust implicitly to provide us with prosperity for the consequences of their own homemade economic incompetence. You couldn't make this stuff up.
