The watch industry in Switzerland is perhaps one of the only industries in the world to draw the curtain shut and stop production for three weeks every summer. This year—similarly for the other years since 1961 when the three-week vacation was declared for all—the machines were unplugged and the lights were turned off Friday evening, July 11. Silence reigned over all the watchmaking ateliers, factories, and related facilities in the small European nation until August 3. On that Monday morning, the lights went back on, the machines began rolling again, and watch production started up for another year.
There are some people, however, who decry this practice. They consider it obsolete and out-of-date, especially in an age of globalization where factories are running day and night everywhere else in the world. The critics maintain that this industry holiday is even more out of touch with reality since watchmaking in Switzerland is enjoying a remarkable upturn in growth. Order books are filled to the brim; suppliers don’t know which way to turn; and delivery delays are increasing, even to the point that some brands are only now beginning to deliver, in dribs and drabs, orders for watches that were introduced with much fanfare in the spring of 2007. These same critics also see, in this watchmaking respite, a form of indifference or even arrogance towards the retailer and the final consumer who ‘just have to wait’ for what they ordered—and even paid for—a long time ago.
Well, let’s take a look at the other side of the equation. Perhaps these anachronistic vacations are, quite simply, an example that the rest of the world might do well to heed. What if everything stopped for at least three weeks a year? What if everyone received a little respite? What if we gave our exhausted planet a breather—one that it badly needs? What if we relaxed the stressful and crazy pace of our lives, a pace that is driving us to the edge of the abyss? And what if, for just one instant, we suspended time—if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, stopped deforesting our planet, stopped strip mining our lands, stopped over-fishing our oceans? What if we simply stopped, for one brief instant, depleting everything around us?
After all, isn’t this exactly the example that the Swiss watch industry is showing us? By suspending all activity for three short weeks, it is suspending the production of its raw material—which is, of course, nothing other than time. To continue running frantically after time—which always goes faster than us—we run the risk of definitively losing it.
This ‘watchmaking holiday’ is thus a welcome tradition, and is the result of an agreement negotiated between the employees and the watch industry employers’ association. This ‘vacation’ was patiently earned—in 1937, employees had the right to one week of vacation per year, while today, they enjoy five or six weeks. It is also a right that must be defended, especially now, at a time when there is a generalized call to question any and all ‘acquired rights’.
There is also a ‘philosophic’ question in addition to those concerns mentioned above. Are people in the service of the economy or is the economy in the service of the people? To even ask the question means we know the answer.


Source: Europa Star August-September 2008 Magazine Issue