Transcript of episode 369 of the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast (host John Jonas) discussing the Philippines' 2024 holiday calendar. The episode explains how the Philippine government determines and can change national holidays, highlights controversy over removal of the EDSA People Power holiday under President Marcos, and promotes a maintained Google calendar (onlinejobs.ph) that listeners can subscribe to for up-to-date holiday dates.
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with online Filipino specialists. This is episode 369, the 2024 holiday calendar. So when we originally planned this episode, it was about the 2024 holiday calendar. And I'm going to talk about the 2024 calendar. But I want to make this more long term so that you understand how holidays in the Philippines work. So the Philippines government in November of 2023 released the 2024 holiday calendar. And we maintain a calendar that you can subscribe to. It's a Google calendar. You can add it to your calendar so that you know when holidays are happening in the Philippines. Why do we do that? Well, because holidays aren't the same in the Philippines as they are in the US So in the Philippines, the government decides when holidays are. They decide what days they fall on, they decide when they're celebrated. And they don't always decide it ahead of time. In fact, they just released the 2024 one. But multiple dates on that calendar are subject to change and will change, actually. So some, some holidays, they don't declare when it is until about a week before. And then you find out, oh, next Tuesday is a holiday. And this usually happens with the Islamic holidays. There's a portion of the Philippines that is Islamic, very small portion in the south western corner of the Philippines, but there's still a portion of the Philippines. And so there are Islamic holidays that are national holidays that they don't decide until very soon before the day. And then in 2024, there's actually some controversy around the holidays. President Marcos is the grandson of Ferdinand Marcos, who was a really, really controversial president years and years ago. And when the Philippine people deposed of President Marcos, they created a holiday around it because there was a revolution. And actually they created two holidays around it. So Ninoy Aquino is like the national hero Philippines. And I don't know exactly the story, but during President Marcos's presidency years ago, Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, which led to the revolution that deposed Marcos as president. When that happened, they created a holiday. They called it the EDSA People Power holiday. That holiday usually falls on February 25th. But this year this created controversy because the current President Marcos, the grandson of Ferdinand Marcos, eliminated that holiday. Now the government said, oh, we're getting rid of that holiday because it falls on Sunday, February 25th. And so we don't have a need for it. But a lot of people are saying that Marcos is trying to erase the revolution that happened with his grandfather. The Marcos Administration says of course not. They're not doing that. Look, we still have the Ninoy Aquino holiday, which is the assassination that led up to that revolution. So we're not trying to eliminate it. Don't worry. Either way, there's quite a bit of controversy around it. And this is a good indication of how holidays work in the Philippines. The government controls them. The government says, when they are, the government reserves the right to change the dates or to eliminate holidays completely. In any case, you can get our holiday calendar, which you can subscribe to@onlinejobs.ph holidays. On that page is an explanation of paid time off and holidays. And there's a link to the Google Calendar where. Which when you find that calendar, it's kind of odd, but Google does this weird. In the bottom right hand corner is a plus link and you can click that plus and it'll add it to your. You can add it to your calendar. I don't use Google Calendar, but I'm subscribed to it in my calendar and it's really nice to see them on my calendar. I put them kind of grayed out yellow so that they're not like super bright. But I know, oh yeah, there's a holiday in the Philippines this week, so I can expect to have people off work on that day. And I know that ahead of time, which is really, really nice. And then last, once you subscribe to that calendar, you'll be subscribed as long as you want to stay subscribed to it, so you'll never have to worry about what holidays are coming up again for your people. In the Philippines, we maintain it and keep it updated. Every year, as soon as the government releases their list of holidays, we update the calendar so that you can get the holidays inside of your calendar.
