From: greg@saltydog.dpsi.com (Gregory R. Travis)
Subject: Re: Why do Americans get so little vacation time?
Organization: Data Parallel Systems, Inc
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 03:44:31 GMT

In <BvIItA.HK7@world.std.com> ttraub@world.std.com (Terry Traub) writes:



>Common misconception:  women
>didn't have to "work" in the old days.  On the contrary; they had to
>work harder than the men.  I will concede that women
>today have double jobs, between career and child-rearing.

Exactly my point.

Well, I don't know of any factual data that clearly shows that women,
doing housework, are working any harder than men in other forms of
work or vice-versa.  And when is the woman's domestic role simply
child-rearing?

I could be really horrible and say that housework has its attractive
moments.  You never clock in, you'll never lose your job, and you can
take a break whenever YOU feel like it.  Plus you get to watch TV while
you work and, perhaps, fix yourself a little drinky while you clean up
the cat barf off the sofa.  The milkman never comes to my office either.

But really, anyone, male or female, or a family as a whole must
perform basic domestic chores to maintain a home and those chores are most
certainly work.  No one is arguing with that.  On the other hand, the
performance of those chores often requires real cash to buy
food, cleaners, lawn ornaments, etc.  Few families live on farms these
days and so they must buy the real goods with which to make a home
and to survive.

Unfortunately the presence of only one breadwinner is no longer sufficient
to buy these things in the quantities or quality of the past.  In the
"traditional" family BOTH heads are now forced to work both to gain 
simple capital to work at home in the domestic sphere.

Bush's mean-spirited and cynical veto of the Family Leave bill makes
this even more acute as families wishing or forced to expand are faced with
a number of rather unattractive choices:
	1.  A minimum sick leave for the mother during birth and the
	    maintenance of salaried surrogates afterwards.
	2.  The possible loss of the mother or father's job as they
	    take an unpaid leave to care for the child.
	3.  Indebteness or loss of savings so that one parent may have
	    the priviledge of being an unpaid domestic engineer.

We can make the situation really nightmarish if we throw in some other
criteria.  Say one parent is working on a graduate degree - it's
increasingly difficult to get any job in the United States without one,
although the real benefits of a nation of chaired taxicab drivers,
published mechanics, and honorable fry cooks have yet to be demonstrated.
Or you have a mortgage you must meet.  Or you are a single parent
(perhaps because some anti-choice pinhead has made the alternative
unavailable).  Or you've already used up your sick leave and
cannot afford day care.

>Only the lucky people have two week vacations in the computer
>industry?  Maybe just in Indiana; most companies I've heard of offer
>at least two weeks paid vacation, often more.  Not everyone requires
>>40 hours either.  Maybe some.

I will wager with you that all companies require at LEAST 40 hours of - not
just "some" and that higher averages are common.

>As for regimentation, try picking cotton in a field all day (hundreds
>of thousands of rural workers in the South), plucking apples or
>oranges from trees (migrant workers), mill workers being used
>essentially as cogs in very dangerous machines.  Nope, I think overall
>things have improved a bit.

If you read my posting clearly you'll see that I asked for data on
professional jobs.  To that I'll add that what I'm saying also applies
to skilled labor.  It's really pretty sad when educated professionals
and skilled workers have to look to the marginalized and broken just
to feel that things are "improving."  And the mill workers didn't come
into being until we had machines, which is well within the timeframe
upon which I am concentrating.

>It would be nice if the average family could exist on one person's
>income; what's your solution?

1.  Lowered educational requirements for all jobs and cash incentives to
    those who choose to and are successful in entering the labor pool
    permanently after their sixteenth year of schooling.
2.  National Health Care.
3.  Paid family medical and crisis leave of up to one year.
4.  Depopulation through tax credits and direct payment to families
    choosing to have one or fewer children.
5.  Penalties on companies that relocate overseas if they have received
    and exploited tax or other government incentives to build plants
    in the United States.
6.  Mandatory minimum five week vacation.
7.  The abolition of tenure in the education system.
8.  Tax advantages for the single-breadwinner family vs. double-income
    homes.

greg
--
Gregory Reed Travis				D  P  S  I
Data Parallel Systems Incorporated   greg@dpsi.com (For MX mailers only!)
Bloomington, IN			     greg@indiana.edu (For the others)
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc