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May 16, 2007
Vacation In The US
Speaking of our inability to focus the conversation on non-economic goods like vacation days, this new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research is upsetting stuff. After reviewing the paid vacation and holiday policies of every advanced country you can think of and a couple you can't, they find that we're the only industrialized naton not to legislate any paid time off and holidays to our workforce. And these aren't small differences: Austria gives workers 4 weeks paid vacation (5 for shift workers), the UK gives 4 weeks, Denmark gives 30 work days, Switzerland gives 5 weeks for young workers (which is an interesting distinction), and so on. We give...none.
Wait...what's that? You want to see it represented visually? Well I got just the thing!
It took me a moment to figure out this graph, as the final two values are a bit confusing. That last line, the one marked 10? That's Japan. There's no line for the United States because we don't legislate any vacation. That's our country. Aren't you proud?
May 16, 2007 in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Someone's got to be last. It's American exceptionalism. Hooray!!!!!
But we have more rich people and I feel good about that.
Posted by: Klein's Tiny Left Nut | May 16, 2007 2:07:49 PM
I don't understand why politicians don't campaign on this issue. I know it sounds like pandering to voters but there are real health and social costs to NEVER having vacation. 5 days of legislated paid vacation per citizen would be a good start. I propose election day, July 4th, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving all be paid holidays. Let companies deduct the cost of paying their employees right of their taxes and give workers who are forced to work like nurses aids, fireman, police etc. an iron-clad guarantee flex agreement to take vacation another time.
Posted by: joejoejoe | May 16, 2007 2:08:34 PM
Doesn't Japan have a huge number of holidays, like Respect for the Elders Day and whatnot? I guess they don't warrant paid time off for them, unless the annual leave is used.
Posted by: Matt | May 16, 2007 2:13:51 PM
True - we dont legislate it, but most people get 2 weeks vacation paid. That still ties us for last, but...
Posted by: yep | May 16, 2007 2:14:45 PM
Americans have a huge self-esteem problem when it comes to working; the dark side of our work ethic is that we don't really believe we deserve to be treated well in the workplace much of the time. We don't value time off because we think productivity=virtue. We're like Boxer in Animal Farm, who believes that if he just works a little harder all will be well...till he's sent to the knackers.
Posted by: emjaybee | May 16, 2007 2:17:29 PM
I'd like to see the same graph but showing the time actually used by the average citizen, rather than the time legally mandated. I think we'd still be last.
-John
Posted by: John I | May 16, 2007 2:35:23 PM
It's a really astonishing mentality among some employers. My wife's old boss granted six paid holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year's Eve, New YeaDay, and Fourth of July) and gave ten Paid Time Off days for sick or vacation leave. And mandated that five of those days had to be used during her annual vacation when she shut down the business. No health benefits.
Now my wife runs her own business and drove her former boss out of the market.
Hah.
Posted by: James F. Elliott | May 16, 2007 2:39:11 PM
Ok, so the question is why? Why is America radically different?
I can only offer some possible correlations. America seemed to be on the right track in the 30s and 40s. Lookup FDR's "Second Bill of Rights" or "Economic Bill of Rights" prrsented in 1944, I think. Something happened after winning WWII and creating the National Security State. LBJ's Great Society was a miracle and a transient overachievement.
And the European nations increased their welfare states and safety nets as they were losing their Empires.
So my guess is that US has been able to leverage its military advantage as a means of extorting cheap labor and other resources overseas(capital?), capturing markets etc, thereby pressuring domestic labor. Empire.
More recently, as labor and commodities have become less important to the American economy, politic control as become a matter of moving actual production overseas and making the economy based on the internal movement of paper/equity or I/P and the consumption it makes possible, labor has becomes even more trapped.
America is about asset inflation, not productivity. Nice to make wages dependent on high P/E ratios.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 16, 2007 2:40:20 PM
Most people do not get two weeks paid vacation. Many make receive this vacation time in theory, but in application, the reality is that most people are two afraid that if they take any time off, their employer will find someone else. This was reported, I believe, in several studies when Nightline, with the new people, did a segment on American leisure time, or perhaps it was NBC Nightly News. I can't remember, but I was truck by the reasons why. The reality of working in america is that we live in fear of not suceeding (which means utter failure) more so than we live for getting ahead as in out on the streets. Some of it is to get a head, but much of it (for the vast majority working in the middle class) it is a response to fear. Fear that one will lose one's job. Fear that one will not be able to put one's kid through school, etc. We have become so accustomed to the fear that we don't even recognize it for what it is, and indeed, we have come to think of it as something to be honored. But, that's just a rationalization.
Posted by: akaison | May 16, 2007 2:41:11 PM
We're like Boxer in Animal Farm, who believes that if he just works a little harder all will be well...till he's sent to the knackers.
Which is exactly the reason I always thought AF was as much a capitalist criticism as a communist one.
Man, this is depressing.
Posted by: twig | May 16, 2007 2:41:57 PM
Shorter Bob:Rentiers and debt peonage.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 16, 2007 2:42:34 PM
"Two afraid" should read "too afraid" and "make receive" should read "may" and "truck" should read "struck" in the above posting by me. I admit I write too fast.
Posted by: akaison | May 16, 2007 2:45:02 PM
*tsk tsk*...children, children.
Don't you know the reason our school system is set up the way it is, which is to say, geared around promoting uniformity of thinking and lockstep behavior, as opposed to creative and critical thinking, artistic pursuits and questioning of the status quo? You know, the whole Prussian Volkschule model? To produce lots of good worker-bees and, ah, no small amount of cannon fodder: "The purpose of the system was to instill loyalty to the Crown and to train young men for the military and the bureaucracy."
Sprinkle generously with Work Ethic and debt-causing materialism and you've got yourself a nation of madly-driven, slave-to-the-dollar worker-bees who are too fearful, and too well-trained as parts of the whole, to see themselves as individuals deserving of lives of their own
Posted by: litbrit | May 16, 2007 2:51:58 PM
Well, yeah, it's depressing for America, but let's celebrate the land of my mother's birth -- Yay Finland!
Posted by: American Citizen | May 16, 2007 3:09:39 PM
What's even more scandalous than our lack of vacation time is the reality that about half our workforce (as recently reported by Bob Herbert, I think) doesn't even get SICK time. So we have people showing up sick at work, spreading their germs; plus we have parents who can't take time off to care for sick children or elders. It's sick, I tell you.
Posted by: beckya57 | May 16, 2007 3:20:50 PM
Sprinkle generously with Work Ethic and debt-causing materialism and you've got yourself a nation of madly-driven, slave-to-the-dollar worker-bees who are too fearful, and too well-trained as parts of the whole, to see themselves as individuals deserving of lives of their own
Yeah, because we can't think for ourselves, unlike you. Ever thought that people might actually like owning things and living to work rather than working to live?
Posted by: Jason | May 16, 2007 3:21:12 PM
There's no line for the United States because we don't legislate any vacation. That's our country. Aren't you proud?
So how come we get vacation days even though the government isn't there to protect us from big-bad-corporations?
Posted by: Jason | May 16, 2007 3:22:54 PM
I want the government to guaruntee a casual Friday dress code and make sure every American has access to a wine bistro or sidwalk cafe for unwinding after a hard 35 hour week.
Posted by: Fred Jones | May 16, 2007 3:30:19 PM
Fred,
That's the first sensible thing I've heard you advocate. Here, here.
And Campari and soda for everyone. Fred's paying.
Posted by: Klein's Tiny Left Nut | May 16, 2007 3:36:31 PM
Jason,
You're right, we live in the best of all possible worlds and enjoy freedom of choice. Even if a huge group of Americans have no paid sick days and no health insurance. They want it that way, every last one of them. We salute their sacrifice for the GDP.
Posted by: Klein's Tiny Left Nut | May 16, 2007 3:39:31 PM
I don't understand the problem.
A lot of companies in this country get 6 holidays, New Year's, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Some companies also have other holidays such as Martin Luther King, President's Day, Columbus Day, Veteran's Day and the day after Thanksgiving.
They may not be federally mandated but they do exist.
90% of Japan closes down for 3 days at New Year's and for Golden Week in early May. That is at least 7 days, then they also get bunches of other days off. however, a number of companies require working on Saturday when you get a day off during the week.
Based on the US and Japan, I am not sure I trust your data.
Posted by: neil wilson | May 16, 2007 3:39:32 PM
So how come we get vacation days even though the government isn't there to protect us from big-bad-corporations?
Define 'we'.
Posted by: twig | May 16, 2007 3:40:13 PM
Neil,
What makes you think all people get paid holidays on the days that you have set forth? Many, many hourly workers do not get paid holidays at all.
Additionally, a few paid holidays are not the same as paid vacation time. Most of these European countries have paid holidays and significant paid vacation leave.
Posted by: Klein's Tiny Left Nut | May 16, 2007 3:54:04 PM
Based on the US and Japan, I am not sure I trust your data.
Nevermind defining we. I just had an aneurysm.
Posted by: twig | May 16, 2007 3:54:12 PM
Dan Savage argues that this is why Americans smoke more pot than citizens of other industrialized nations: it's like a mini vacation, the only one we get. And he further argues that all these stoned workers cost businesses far more in lost productivity than giving vacation days would.
Posted by: radosh | May 16, 2007 3:56:21 PM
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