Take Labor Day. People start slacking off by Friday afternoon, so it's basically a four day weekend. I checked and the US has 11 federal holidays! (plus all the minor ones depending on the state). Add to that people boozing, smoking weed, doing drugs 10x more on holidays, when they finally get back to work, they're unproductive for who knows how long.
I understand where you are coming from, but as someone who has mostly been an employee (senior manager, a good chunk of it) his whole career, I am a big fan of holidays, vacation time, etc. Being in sales/marketing, of course, there is a different mindset and there is no real productivity loss because of holidays. Leads still come in, orders still get booked, etc., either before or after the time off. I have never really seen deals lost or leadflow squeezed because of a holiday. Manufacturing might be a different story, of course.
I have held this view for a long time, so I was interested to learn that Trump has expressed a similar idea for years. While I understand closing for major religious holidays, I do not understand closing for occasions like Labor Day. I don't get this either: today we were at the mall and Chick-fil-A was closed, which they are every Sunday. I appreciate allowing employees to attend church, but many workers rely on Sunday hours for income to cover rent and other bills. They are trying to be nice, but it forces their employees to seek additional work elsewhere.
It's not a 4 day weekend if they're physically on the job and what you describe seems more like a work culture problem than a problem with time off. Maybe read up on the history of Labor Day which I'm pretty sure will be the same as NZ, the UK etc and you'll appreciate the irony of wanting people to work on it. See, I'd rather not pay people to be deluded and gaslit by their doomsday cults.
Unions are the reason we have some holidays, including Labor Day. It's never good when a union starts something, lol. Basically, lazy folks get a pass to chill while undocumented and temp workers end up grinding through every Sunday and holiday. The whole system is completely backwards. What about NZ? How did their LD originate?
Through the excellent, hard-working unions who made the 40-hour week a reality. Without collective bargaining we'd all be living in coffin apartments like in Hong Kong. Every industry that has turned away from unions in NZ is worse off for it. Longer hours, or worse: zero-hour contracts, pay disparity.
And have major social problems with people not marrying and starting families. Quality of life is low.