From: emolinar@stake.DaytonOH.NCR.COM (Elizabeth Molinaro)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: Why do Americans get so little vacation time?
Date: 12 Aug 92 18:46:33 GMT
Organization: Stakeholder Relations, NCR Corp in Dayton,OH

<1992Aug11.233841.25067@bnr.ca> <1992Aug12.005036.24057@cshl.org>
Reply-To: emolinar@stake.DaytonOH.NCR.COM (Elizabeth Molinaro)
Followup-To: 
Distribution: 
Organization: Stakeholder Relations, NCR Corp in Dayton,OH
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In article <1992Aug12.005036.24057@cshl.org> pjm@cshl.org (Pat Monardo)
writes:
>In article <1992Aug11.233841.25067@bnr.ca> labiche@crchh561.BNR.CA (Maurice
LaBiche) writes:
>>I'm also puzzled by this fact(and a little pissed off too).
>>Is it really that this lack of slack time keeps our economy
>>from heading down the tubes?  I can't believe that.  I wish
>>this would change soon but I'm sure the big $ interests will
>>try and keep this from happening, the old lost productivity line 
>>again.  It's enough to make you think how civil this country 
>>really is or isn't.  This is just another reason to re-evaluate
>>the claim that americans live 'better' than people anywhere else!
>
>is this an "accounting" difference? most american companies
>have holidays that arent considered part of the 2 weeks.
>we also have a couple weeks of "sick" time (or more actually there).
>and usually this goes up to 4 weeks after a couple years.
>

        Nope.  It's not an accounting difference:  most European companies
        have holidays that are not official vacation time either; hell,
        in Italy the Feast days make it seem, sometimes, that it's work
        one day, one day off, work one day, one day off!
        
        OK, do you want my opinion? (I can hear you all screaming "no"
        as if I were Diane Chambers!)  Anyway, this lack of vacation is
        the direct result of the Protestant Work Ethic combined with
        the Industrial Age...both of which worked hand-in-hand to 
        shape the way the US is today.

        The Work Ethic assumed that work = godliness (and lets not
        forget that in the early days to be indigent meant that you
        were morally/spiritually bereft also.)  So, that if you worked
        hard God would smile upon you and make you rich.

        Secondly, work moved progressively farther and farther from
        the home and became a "man's" domain as a result.  A good man
        worked to provide a home and food for his family.  A good wife
        worked, at home, to make her home a "sanctuary" for the poor man.

        The Work Ethic decreed that this separation be rather total, and
        of course, since everything at home was left to the good wifey
        there was no need for long vacations, long lunches, etc.  Vacation,
        I imagine, was not standard until this century AT ALL.  According
        the the ethics of the founding fathers, vacation would have been
        an extremely frivolous idea.  The man's role was to work.  Period.
        He was not supposed to care about "quality time" with family and
        all.

        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.
        
        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.

        This is one of my big gripes about the US.  So there.  
        It IS unfair, and given the fact that we all work during
        the summer but take vacations at different times (and aren't
        we all dependent on other people) it often takes two or three
        weeks to get a project done during J, J, or Aug.--a project
        that may have taken a week during the school year.

        It would increase productivity, IMHO, if we did like the
        French and took August off.  The entire month.  But, alas,
        this definately smacks of totalitarianism AND we'd never
        get past the hotel/air/travel lobbyists!  

        Whew. That was long.  I hope I was reasonably articulate, as
        I just put a couple of hundred years of social history and
        theory into a couple of paragraphs.  

        Elizabeth
      
Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa