From: silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva)
Subject: Re: Why do Americans get so little vacation time?
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 07:02:11 GMT

In article <1296@stake.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> emolinar@stake.DaytonOH.NCR.COM (Elizabeth Molinaro) writes:
>        Basically:  the American Way of Work was founded upon the Industrial
>        Revolution.  The European Way of Work was already definately set
>        before the IR and less likely to change (as was social mobility,
>        etc.)  So, we gave up things like "dinner" to mean a long,
>        restful lunch at home (and now have dinner at night)--most
>        European nations do not do this even today.
>        
	I'm not certain, but I think that our lack of vacation and family
time vis-a-vis Europe is something which has arisen during the past 4
decades. Frankly, before the middle of the twentieth century, the working
stiff, both blue-collar and clerical, was really under the thumb of his
employer in both societies. There were however many more people in the
US who ran their own Mom n' Pop businesses and worked on the family farm
back then; hard work and continuous, but they had the advantage of 
working for themselves. European society seems 1) to have retained more
of this traditionally employed class of small shopkeepers and farmers and
2) to have progressed further in terms of worker's rights in the sphere
of large-scale, corporate employment, i.e. vacation time, parental
leave, etc.  
	Most of the arguments I've read or heard against such amenities
are usually underpinned by the basic notion that if we institute or
mandate _anything_ along the lines of the programs mentioned above, that
we will rapidly devolve into a stagnant command economy.
	I rarely see this premise backed up by valid case studies, re-
search or anything more than vague prejudice. 

	In a completely different vein however, has anyone else noticed
that the tide of public opinion seems to have turned somewhat in 
regards to vacation/family time? I have a very non-quantitative, 
anecdotal sense that it has. It seems that the newsmedia was running 
many more spots and writing many more articles about the virtues of the
long Japanese work week 6 years ago than it is today. I'm much more likely 
to read about Japanese protesting 'death by overwork' now than I am to read 
scare-tactic stuff about how they are taking us over, soley on account
of how they work longer hours (longer being implicitly equated with harder
better, smarter, etc.). 

	Has anyone on s.c.usa read Juliet Schorr's, The Overworked
American? Does anyone care to comment upon it?

>        Ironically, we have never been a country in which "family"
>        values REALLY mattered: or this would be more self-evident
>        in our work and vacation patterns.
>

	Or community values apparently, judging from how quickly 
someone responded to a volunteer worker in a post suggesting he
shouldn't expect to get paid for having a good time with the flyboys.
	The real kicker is, those of us with net.access are probably
the least herded/burdened worker in America in this regard. Especially
out here in California, it's the high-tech companies who are commonly 
most progressive in regards to flex-time type approaches. Believe me
folks, the people who clean most of your buildings at night would get
kicked in the face by their contractor employers if they ever evinced
an interest in something so basic as comprehesive dental insurance, much
less extra paid vacation!! (I'd have said we, but the janitorial staff
at Stanford actually do pretty well on the bennies).

--
======================================================================
|| Holly Silva			I have nothing terribly clever to say||
|| Applied Earth Sciences	today.  You're in luck.		     ||
|| Stanford University						     ||
Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa