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Front Page > Issues > 2004> August

The vanishing American vacation

By Jennifer Polis

Ah, summertime! Time to kick back and relax. Isn’t it nice that you get to take a paid vacation the month of August....Wait, what’s that you say? You don’t get four weeks of paid a vacation a year? Oh, wait.... I forgot, this isn’t Europe, it’s America – sorry! You probably don’t get any paid vacation.

Forgive the sarcasm, but it’s a sad fact of life that most Americans aren’t getting enough, or any, paid vacation time off from work. In the U.S. there are no laws giving workers mandatory paid vacations, unlike in many European countries. A common way that U.S. employers decide vacation time is to add 8 hours for every month worked, increasing according to how many years a person has worked at the company. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that after one year of service, American workers in private industry were eligible for 8.8 days of paid vacations in 2003; after 25 years, this number increased to 19.1. (Keep in mind, however, that this only applies to full-time workers; part timers are usually not entitled to any vacation time.) Compare this to our European counterparts: France, 5 weeks; Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy and Great Britain, 4 weeks; and Spain, Austria, and Denmark, 30 days. Even Japanese workers, notoriously hard workers, receive a minimum of 10 days paid time off.

We’re also working longer hours than ever. According to the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) report, The State of Working America: “Over the last 30 years, workers in middle-income married-couple families with children have added an average of 20 weeks at work, the equivalent of five more months...In 2000, [Americans] worked an average of 1,877 hours per year, more than in any other rich, industrialized economy.” And, minority families are working even longer hours than white families. Annual work hours of Black and Hispanic families increased by 14.7 percent and 14.4 percent, respectively, while white families worked 11.7 percent more since 1979. By 2000, middle-income Black families worked the equivalent of 12 full-time weeks more than white families, according the EPI.

There are, however, grassroots organizations looking to give Americans more free time, such as the “Take Back Your Time Day” Campaign. Held on October 24, Take Back Your Time Day aims to get people to take the day or part of it off work to initiate a national conversation about work/life balance and how it can be reclaimed. The date falls nine weeks before the end of the year, making the point that Americans now work nine weeks more each year than Western Europeans do, according to the Web site, www.timeday.org. The Take Back Your Time Day Campaign also has a legislative agenda with four goals: Making Election Day a national holiday; enacting paid Family and Medical Leave as part of the Family and Medical Leave Act; three weeks minimum annual paid leave for all workers; and a cap on mandatory overtime.

John de Graaf, the National Coordinator of the campaign, is hoping to get people talking about how we can reclaim our time as our own. “We’ve never had a national conversation about what’s important to us as we grow richer as a society,” he said. He cites several key factors why we’re working so much more: Our culture’s emphasis on consumption; weak unions; and the inequality between rich and poor.

In the 1930s, there was much talk about how technological developments would give us more free time to spend with our families and on leisure activities. After World War II, however, society changed and we became lost in a consumer culture, with more emphasis on consumption and having more stuff, he said.

We also have the weakest union movement of any industrialized country, de Graaf said. Indeed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after 25 years of service, union workers enjoy six more paid vacation days than non-union workers.

The gap between the rich and poor is contributing to the problem of overwork in that the rich push themselves to work harder to make more money to have more things; the middle class tries to keep up with the rich while drowning in debt; and the poor have to work harder and harder to just buy the basics. “Everybody’s hurt in having to work more,” de Graaf said, not just the poor.

The Take Back Your Time Day Campaign cites many problems that occur with overwork, among them: It encourages consumption of calorie-laden fast foods; threatens our marriages, families and relationships as we find less time for each other; less time to care for our children and elders; less time to just hang out; weakens our communities; reduces employment as fewer people are hired and then required to work longer hours, or are hired for poorly-paid part-time jobs without benefits; leaves many of us with little time to vote, much less be informed, active citizens; and leaves us little time for ourselves, for self-development, or for spiritual growth. As for physical health, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control concludes that “Eighty-three percent of all deaths for adults between the age of 21 and 65 are related to lifestyle.”

Not only does overwork affect employees personally, but employers should be worried about the effect on their bottom lines. The American Psychological Association estimates that absences due to psychological problems cost the workplace over $57 billion annually; and health care costs are nearly 50 percent higher for workers reporting high levels of stress. Job stress and burnout costs our economy more than $200 billion a year, according the Take Back Your Time Day Campaign.

Corporate executives will no doubt argue that giving Americans more time off will decrease productivity, but this is debatable. Working less may decrease our annual productivity, but will increase our hourly productivity, de Graaf said. It’s also a matter of how you look at it, he points out. “There’s not a lot of evidence that producing more will make us a better society,” he said. Things like leisure, family time, and enjoying nature are more important to a lot of people, he said.

The Take Back Your Time Day Campaign is working with a variety of grassroots organizations to make their dream of more leisure time a reality, including the Work To Live Campaign; the National Partnership for Women and Families; the Massachusetts Council of Churches, and a variety of other community and environmental organizations. Groups interested in family issues should be especially concerned about overwork. According to the EPI, middle-income wives added the equivalent of more than 12 weeks of full-time work between 1979 and 2000.

While the campaigns to take back our time have been slow-going, there is some good news on the horizon. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) is trying to pass guaranteed sick leave legislation with the Healthy Families Act; and Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) introduced improvements to the Family and Medical Leave Act, de Graaf said. Also, some states have made Election Day a partial vacation day. Additionally, Bush’s top pollster, Frank Lutz, has identified free time as an important issue on people’s minds.

Although individual politicians like the idea, “Nobody is willing to speak out because of corporate opposition,” de Graaf said. “But public concern is growing.”

Jennifer Polis holds a journalism degree from Penn State. She is a local freelance writer, Portland Indymedia activist, and volunteer with Northwest Resistance Against Genetic Engineering. Contact her by email at: jennifersvoice@yahoo.com.

 

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Last Updated: September 2, 2004