Why We Don't Vacation Like the French

[marmar]

From the American Prospect:


Why We Don't Vacation Like the French

How come Americans don't take a month off every summer, even though we'd like to? Blame it on individualism.

Ezra Klein | July 19, 2007 | web only



The most astonishing revelations in Michael Moore's Sicko have nothing to do with healthcare. They're about vacation time. French vacation time, to be precise.

Sitting at a restaurant table with a bunch of American ex-pats in Paris, Moore is treated to a jaw-dropping recitation of the perks of social democracy: 30 days of vacation time, unlimited sick days, full child care, social workers who come to help new parents adjust to the strains and challenges of child-rearing. Walking out of the theater, I heard more envious mutterings about this scene than any other.

"Why can't we have that?" my fellow moviegoers asked.

The first possibility is that we already do. Maybe that perfidious Michael Moore is just lying in service of his French paymasters. But sadly, no. A recent report by Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research suggests that Moore is, if anything, understating his case. "The United States," they write, "is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation." Take notice of that word "only." Every other advanced economy offers a government guarantee of paid vacation to its workforce. Britain assures its workforce of 20 days of guaranteed, compensated leave. Germany gives 24. And France gives, yes, 30.

We guarantee zero. Absolutely none. That's why one out of 10 full-time American employees, and more than six out of 10 part-time employees, get no vacation. And even among workers with paid vacation benefits, the average number of days enjoyed is a mere 12. In other words, even those of us who are lucky enough to get some vacation typically receive just over a third of what the French are guaranteed.

This is strange. Of all these countries, the United States is, by far, the richest. And you would think that, as our wealth grew and our productivity increased, a certain amount of our resources would go into, well, us. Into leisure. Into time off. You would think that we'd take advantage of the fact that we can create more wealth in less time to wrest back some of those hours for ourselves and our families.

But instead, the exact opposite has happened. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American man today works 100 more hours a year than he did in the 1970s, according to Cornell University economist Robert Frank. That's 2 1/2 weeks of added labor. The average woman works 200 more hours -- that's five added weeks. And those hours are coming from somewhere: from time with our kids, our friends, our spouses, even our bed. The typical American sleeps one to two hours less a night than his or her parents did. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=why_we_dont_vacation_like_the_french

[gatorboy]

1. I guess the real question is: Why does America hate Americans?

[jojo54]

2. * takes enough vacation time for all of us! eom

[rpannier]

3. well if you average your vacation time with scrubs vacation it's roughly equal

You probably get two weeks and scrub gets 4 months...Average is 9 weeks.

[T Wolf]

4. The US is more of a slave-economy than any other "advanced economy"

nation on earth.

It is only because Amerika is so wealthy that we have air conditioning in our slave quarters and therefore, are not that uncomfortable.

Just think how even higher our standard of living would be if the corporate masters did not take the obscene share of the profits that they currently do.

If the system was made more progressive, we would be living in a utopian society

AND

be able to share the wealth with the rest of the world.

The only question is how greedy the corporatists are going to get and at what point the slaves will rebel. Given the greed and selfishness of Americans, I do not believe there is an upper limit to the rape of the workers or the planet that those who control us will ever reach.

Thus, they will eventually reach a point where enough people will have had enough. Their greed and short-sightedness will be their downfall. Of course, we will fall as well.

But, eggs and omelets.

[TlalocW]

5. I never cared for the idea of living in France

Mainly because I don't speak their weird moon-man language. :) What's the number of vacation days in Spain? Yo hablo espanol muy purty.

TlalocW

[irislake]

6. All European countries have more vacation time

than Americans. They believe you work to live not live to work. Also they don't need as many toys. Big not better etc..

[TygrBright]

7. I once worked with a company that gave everyone...

...EVERYONE, once they passed a three-month probation period, a month of vacation every year. And you could negotiate using up to a week even during the probation period.

They also had flextime and a THIRTY (not forty) hour work week, with two six-hour shifts per day.

They paid less than comparable employers by about 10%, simply because they needed to provide all those benefits for a larger staff than competitors, but they had fantastic employee morale and loyalty. They succeeded spectacularly.

I bet you can guess what happened.

Yep, they succeeded so spectacularly that they were bought by a Corporate Conglom, which immediately proceeded to cost-cut their strengths right out of existence, and they lost old staff in droves. They slid so precipitously down the slope that within two years their entity was folded into another entity owned by the same Corporation and ceased to exist as a separate entity at all.

We never learn.

wearily,
Bright

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. And that is exactly WHY we need legislated vacation time and other benefits

Between grad school and my first academic job, I temped for three years. One of the things I learned in my tour of local companies, ranging from nationally recognized corporations to a guy working out of a converted garage, was that employers tend to impose whatever they can get away with.

Even if an employer is enlightened, the successor may not be.

The town where I went to high school was the original home of a well-known company. The owner, who knew my parents, said that he intended to be such a good employer that he'd never have to worry about labor problems, and he was true to his word. Assembly line workers had what was good pay for that time, as well as full medical and dental, pensions, and two weeks' vacation, with a choice of either a 40-hour or a 36-hour week. The owner said that he had the best workers anyone could hope for (mostly from farming families in the surrounding town, solid people with a good work ethic) and really appreciated them.

This lasted until the owner retired and his children were uninterested in running the company. It was bought out by an out-of-state conglomerate who didn't even bother to cut benefits at the plant. Instead, they just shut the plant and moved production to a town in Texas along the Mexican border. This was before the era of the maquiladora, and one company executive (who also knew my parents) said that the new owners had made the move with the specific aim of hiring illegal immigrants.

In one sense, I have benefited from the capitalist system, since I can work free-lance instead of having to have a specific employer. But I am really, really aware of the system's shortcomings and know that it needs regulation, not blind worship of the All-Powerful God Market Forces, to function in a humane manner. Lack of regulation is the road to feudalism.