No-Vacation Nation

It’s mid-August.

With less than a month to go before school starts, many families will take one or two weeks of vacation. Certainly that is what my family did for all those years when I was growing up.

However, for many, vacation means staying home. As Prentiss Gray wrote on Aug. 13 about the cost of living in New Jersey, it's expensive to live here. Taking the family on vacation makes it more so. But at least these families have a wage-earner paid a salary even when they are away.

Or are they? Many people work for smaller companies as "contractors." As one of those, it literally costs me money if I take a day off or holiday because I get no paid benefits.

But at least I have a job. Others do not even have a job, and here taking a vacation costs money as well as the time that could be spent looking for a job when so many others are also searching.

According to a report, "No-Vacation Nation Revisited" by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, when it comes to guaranteed paid vacations and holidays the United States ranks dead last out of 21 rich nations that are members of the OECD, or Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Many of the more benevolent nations are in Europe, starting with France - a nation Americans love to revile - which leads with 30 guaranteed vacation days. Austria, in the middle with 22 vacation days, offers the most paid holidays at 13. Even Greece offers 20 vacation days and six guaranteed holidays. The U.S. guarantees zero of both.

During the recent crisis in Europe when Greece went into default and threatened the rest of the eurozone, the talking heads on CNBC said  "reforms" were needed before the richer European nations bailed out the nation. This included cutting the workforce -- presumably those people actually using the guaranteed vacation days and holidays.

You might say, "But I've always gotten Presidents Day off or the 4th of July from my employer." Did you ever wonder why?

First, we're talking about private, non-unionized companies. There is no U.S. law forcing companies to provide paid holidays and vacations. What time you get is at the largesse of your employer. As the report states, "In the absence of a legal requirement for paid vacation and paid holidays, about one-fourth of the U.S. workforce has no paid vacation or paid holidays in the course of their work year."

Where I worked, we got the major holidays because the U.S. Mail was not delivered. Maybe that's the same at your company. No mail, no reason to be open. Also, companies with unions and collective bargaining agreements - and there are fewer of these - have at least some guaranteed time off for vacations and holidays.

If you work for a small company or work part-time, well, good luck.

"The lack of paid vacation and paid holidays in the United States is particularly acute for lower-wage and part-time workers, and for employees of small businesses," according to the report. "Low-wage, part-time and small-business employees are all less likely to receive paid vacations or paid holidays, and when they do receive paid time off, the amount they receive is far less generous than what is available to their higher-wage, full-time counterparts with larger employers."

My father was a small businessman, a doctor. He could've easily afforded to take off more than the same one or two weeks in August. But he had a need to keep working the other 50 weeks of the year, including the fear that patients would go to other doctors if he wasn't around.

The same is true for you and me. Take too much time off, even time to which you are entitled, and there is the fear employers will think they can't rely on you, that you can be replaced. This is particularly true when unemployment remains high and those who do have jobs are doing the work of three people. 

Which is why some people only take time off when they must, because their employers won't let them roll over the unused vacation time into the next year.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," is a familiar phrase. I think all work and no vacations makes America a dull nation of fearful, stressed-out and angry workers.