Philippine public holidays, and how to plan around them

If you work with somebody in the Philippines, the holiday calendar will eventually land on a deadline. It is easier to plan around than to be surprised by.

Two kinds, and the difference is real

Philippine holidays come in two legal classes, and the practical difference is not a technicality.

• Regular holidays. Most people have the day off.
• Special non-working days. A day off in many workplaces, but not all.

A freelancer is not an employee, so neither class automatically means they are not working. What it does mean is that banks, government offices and most of the people they might need to reach are closed.

The calendar is not finished a year ahead

Some dates move. The two Eid holidays follow the Islamic calendar and are proclaimed close to the date, and a year's full list arrives by presidential proclamation rather than being fixed in law. So a calendar that claims to know next year exactly is guessing.

We seed the dates from the actual proclamations and cite them, and the ones that have not been proclaimed yet are simply absent rather than estimated.

What to do about it

Ask, once, at the start: which of these do you take off? Most people will tell you, and most of the answers are shorter than you expect. Then put the answer somewhere you will both see it, not in a message you will lose.

On the hours calendar the holidays are marked, with what the legal class means in practice written out rather than left as a badge. Logging hours on a day marked as leave produces a warning and never a refusal, because a freelancer who chooses to work a holiday is not doing anything wrong.

The mistake is not scheduling over a holiday. The mistake is finding out on the day.

Two dates worth knowing

Holy Week, which moves with Easter, is the one week of the year when the country substantially stops. Christmas here starts early and ends late by most standards. Neither is a problem if it is in the plan.