While Europeans Holiday, Americans Toil (by Marie Cocco for Truthdig)

[marmar]

While Europeans Holiday, Americans Toil


Posted on Jul 9, 2007
By Marie Cocco

If you’re reading this while on vacation, great for you. If you’re reading this at work, having just finished a vacation or a five-day weekend cobbled together around last week’s celebration of Independence Day, I hope the time off was as spectacular as the fireworks.

If you won’t get another day off work until December’s holiday season, you’re not alone. Americans and vacations just don’t mix.

This may surprise those who have just spent hours stranded at airports or idling in a hot line for a ride at an amusement park. But a quarter of American workers get no paid vacation or paid holidays. And on average, those private-sector workers who do get paid time off are granted only nine vacation days and six paid holidays each year, according to government statistics analyzed by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The liberal-leaning think tank analyzed paid vacation and holiday leave policies among the U.S. and nations with comparably developed economies—the European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The predictable portrait is one of the United States as a nation of workaholics—a syndrome related less to the archetype of a striving executive than it is linked to government policy.

In the rest of the industrialized world, a month or more of paid vacation is typical, and often required. Many Americans know that. And there are can-you-top-this supplements to this surfeit of paid time off. Such as: In Austria, workers who labor at “heavy night work” get two or three extra days off. Also in Austria—as well as in Sweden and New Zealand—workers are actually paid at a higher rate when they’re on vacation than when they’re at work.

In France, workers get extra paid time off if they take some of their vacation days outside of the summer season. In Norway, those 60 and older get extra time off. And of course, your vacation could be ruined if you get sick while you’re away. So Sweden guarantees that if a worker becomes sick while on leave, the days of the illness don’t count against vacation time.

Stingy leave policies in the United States go hand and hand with weekly work hours that exceed those in many industrialized countries. And they parallel skimpy sick leave and family leave policies that give millions of Americans no effective safety net when illness or emergencies strike. Nearly half of private-sector workers—57 million people—have no paid sick days, according to Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a chief sponsor of a measure to require at least some sick days for employees who work more than 30 hours per week. The problem is particularly acute for low-wage workers, more than three-fourths of whom get no paid leave when they are ill. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070709_while_europeans_holiday_americans_toil/

[soothsayer]

1. That's one thing that really does suck in the US. Effing protestant work ethic.

Calvinism is still ruining things for us lo these many years later.

[MasonJar]

2. One of my favorite scenes in "Sicko" was when Michael Moore

was interviewing Americans in Paris about this very topic. The Americans were all in agreement that they got 5+ weeks of paid vacation every year. In addition, their sick days were not a number; if one of them is sick he/she stays home, no counting the days. As they wisely announced. "If you are sick, you are sick."

[getmeouttahere]

3. It's quite simple - a happy and healthy worker is a productive worker....

in the U.S., people are literally being worked to death, or at least a shorter life span. But it's what we've allowed the corporatocracy to do to us.

[LibertyLover]

4. I love where I work

I get 30 days of vacation a year and we have to take at least 15 a year or we loose them. Our executive vice president just sent out the annual "thank you for your hard work" (our fiscal year ends June 30) and reminded us to take annual leave to be with our families.