From: ted@sage0.gsfc.nasa.gov (Ted Ying)
Subject: Re: Why do Americans get so little vacation time?
Organization: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 16:15:41 GMT

jdaly@cs.strath.ac.uk (John W Daly CS89) writes:

>Hope I`m not restarting an original arguement - I haven`t read the
>articles here for a while - but do Americans receive paid holidays to the
>same extent the British do?  We receive about, on average I think, 25 -
>30 paid hlidays which can be taken throughout the year.  This doesn`t include
>Chrimbas time and Easter.  I was informed that Americans do not receive
>many payed holidays at all, and was wondering if this was true.
>
	Americans, on average received 10 paid holidays and 2 weeks
	paid vacation.  Which amounts to 20 days of vacation during
	a year.  This is less than most other countries in the world.

	The whole argument is whether this is appropriate.  Many people
	feel that we deserve more vacation than 2 weeks and that the
	US government should institute legislation to force businesses
	to grant more paid vacations.

	There are several fallacies involved in this agenda.  The first
	is that granting more vacation will aid unemployment.  The idea
	is that with more people using vacation time, companies will
	need more people to the work.  Unfortunately during the current
	economic crisis, many companies don't have the additional money
	to hire more people, especially when they are getting less
	productivity out of the ones that do.  Whereas some companies
	may hire additional people to compensate, many will not and will
	merely overburden existing employees even more.

	The second fallacy is that people deserve more PAID time off.
	In many companies, with sufficient prior arrangement, you can
	get unpaid leave.  My argument against the proposed change is
	that companies should not be forced to provide more paid time
	off.  And especially, government should not step in to guarantee
	this.  If you want two more weeks to take a 3 or 4 week trip
	through Europe or Asia, then arrange with your supervisor or
	manager to take 2 additional weeks of unpaid leave with your
	vacation.  But don't expect the company to pay for your vacation
	time.  They provide you with 2 weeks of paid leave.  Anything
	else should be your own responsibility.  I have done this in
	the past with prearranged vacations (taken leave without pay).
	
	Someone mentioned that there is a higher burnout rate in the US
	and attributed that having less vacation time.  More likely, the
	higher burnout rate in the US is linked to the longer man-hour
	weeks and uncounted overtime that people put in.  How many people
	do you know in our field that still work only 40 hours a week?
	I know relatively few.  It comes with the jobs that we do, that
	we put in "the time needed to get the job done" which is too
	often 45, 50 or more hours per week.  I think a more appropriate
	government action would be to enforce 40 hour weeks or at least
	to pay OT wages to salaried employees working more than 40 hours
	a week.  More appropriate perhaps, but I'm still not sure that
	I want to advocate more government intervention in the marketplace.

	Ted Ying			ted@rosserv.gsfc.nasa.gov
	Hughes/STX			Goddard Space Flight Center
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc