I get no paid vacation, and it's pretty damn annoying. I didn't even get paid holidays until last fall. There's a certain kind of bitterness that develops when the office is closed for a week around Christmas and I consequently lose a week's wages.
Do you get five weeks you're allowed to actually take?
Last year, my firm announced at a meeting of all the associates that they were upping vacation time to four weeks. The thrill of it was mitigated by the Managing Partner saying that: "We're doing this to stay in line with other firms -- seems silly to me; who has time to take the two weeks you get now?"
1: Oooh, that sucks. Having more vacation than I'm allowed to take is actually kind of nice -- it means that if I want to take a day, and I can arrange work to make it possible, I never have to worry about whether I have vacation available. It's just not like I actually get to take the whole four weeks.
That sucks, LB. Yeah, we're allowed to take it. It can be complicated to take three weeks at once, for example, but I did it when I went to Iran, another person did it for his honeymoon, etc.
Technically, we don't get paid vacation. But, you know.
i'm allowed to 'buy' an extra week of vacation from my employer - it's basically unpaid leave, but they spread the "unpaid" aspect over the entire year. IMO, that's the best benefit in the history of H.R..
re: 1--that sucks
re: not taking vacation time. I bill more than anyone else at my firm, but I also take vacations (3 or 4 weeks a year). If you have the time, take it, even if you have to work harder when you are at work. The head-clearing effects are worth it (although it is rare that I am on vacation and do not have to do a little work, but that is what laptops and the Internet are for!).
Cripes, I can't imagine no vacation. I work for a startup; we get six days paid vacation plus the usual holidays. It's not much, but I wouldn't want to go without.
I can take as much unpaid time as I want.
The bottom line is that I earn when I work and I do not earn when I do not work. (Of course, "I" includes my secretary and/or other staff.)
A nasty feature of shift-workers who don't get paid holidays off is the way it pits them against each other -- you don't have to work Christmas because your job sucks, you have to work Christmas because that bitch Brenda doesn't and you have to cover for her. (Dialogue taken from family gatherings.)
As I never tire of mentioning, I get 4 weeks paid vacation a year, on top of having a 4 day, 32 hour work week, plus holidays (though if a holiday falls on a day I already have off, I don't get an extra day. Ripoff.) The only impediments to my taking large blocks of time (greater than two weeks, say) off at once is my own conscience and the desire to have more vacation later on. I actually prefer not to have too much time off at once--it's better for me to just have a day or two here or there. Of course, with a four day week, a day or two artfully deployed can feel like a lot more time away.
Oh, and I'm forbidden to be in the office after 6:30 or on weekends. I never want to leave this job.
The best thing about my current project is that one of my boss's overriding philosophies is "don't fuck with people's vacations". I really think that's one of the best ways to keep people happy. We don't always get exactly what we want but it's far better than any other project I've worked on.
People try to limit their vacation to a week at a time but I was able to take off two weeks for Australia and we work with international staff to make sure they can do 2-3 weeks at a stretch at least every other year to go back to their home country.
Compare this to my last project, where my friend RightWingRyan asked for two days off for a long weekend five months in advance to go to California for his grandfather's 90th birthday party and got it denied because we might be busy. He had to fly out to the west coast and back in the course of a regular weekend. (of course, it turned out that we weren't busy and our team lead "graciously" told him the Monday before that he could take a long weekend if he wanted, as if he could have changed his flight.)
A nasty feature of being agency staff is being pitted against each other both ways at once - who has enough time or a rich enough partner or just enough luck to be able to take time off over Christmas while everyone else has to work, and who has enough sway with the boss to pull the few hours that are actually available o pay for the presents if you aren't one of the aforementioned. A nasty two edged blade.
When we got bought by our new owners, most of our holidays switched from being fixed (like MLK Day, Columbus Day, etc.) to floating. It sounded like a good idea because it was more like extra vacation time but actually I miss it. There's something relaxing about being told you have to take off a day for no reason. I wouldn't think to take a 3 day weeekend just to hang around my house but being forced to is great.
14: Yeah, this sort of thing is why I don't take more. I could take all my vacation pretty easily if I could take it on three days notice, but there's not much I can do with time off on that little notice (kids in school, husband working) other than bum around the city going to museums. Planning and protecting time any distance out is much trickier.
Compare this to my last project, where my friend RightWingRyan asked for two days off for a long weekend five months in advance to go to California for his grandfather's 90th birthday party and got it denied because we might be busy.
That's when it's time to start sending out resumes. Life is too short for that nonsense.
See, in the rest of the world companies denying workers holiday due to pressure of work is generally seen as prima facie evidence of incompetent middle management, since a well run firm should be able to plan its resources better than to fall back on that.
So firms tend not to do it.
I am currently seeing how much the lack of mandated time off of various sorts sucks for my poor supervisee, who is about to have a baby after several weeks of bedrest. She's already burned through all of her paid time off and most of her FMLA leave (I'm not actually clear on how this is possible, since we did as much of this as possible on "intermittent leave", with her working a couple of hours a day from home, and so it seems to me that she's only "spent" a few dozen hours of unpaid leave, but HR assures me it is the case -- I guess you get 12 weeks of leave total, whether it's unpaid or not). While I'm at least able to keep her position open for her while she goes onto non-FMLA leave, she's about to stop receiving benefits as well as pay. She's single, so she's not on anyone else's insurance, and COBRA is hella expensive. Ugh.
The concrete, researched disadvantages of overworking people is proof that American employers today prefer their employees vulnerable rather than productive.
RANT WARNING: This all goes to the larger issue of the parsimonious nature of our "democratically governed" nation. Like, what the hell keeps us from some sort of single-payer national health plan??? Redfoxtailshrub's supervisee in 20 is running out of time, but also out of benefits as well...
My question as to calling us "democratic" arises from the fact that the aggregation of power into fewer and fewer hands and the influence of the money held in those hands over the national debate regarding these things means that the lemmings will follow the crowd and keep voting against those people and issues they are inflamed against...
Aaaargh!
Where would we find that research, MV?
See, in the rest of the world companies denying workers holiday due to pressure of work is generally seen as prima facie evidence of incompetent middle management, since a well run firm should be able to plan its resources better than to fall back on that.
I think it means the same thing in the US. There is a different view of how much paid vacation people get as a norm (and, I think, different values placed on taking all of the vacation available), but clearly if the impediment to not being able to take vacation is a failure to plan, there is a management problem. Now, in some industries (the law, for example) it is simply impossible to plan for every eventuality, but if my small law firm can make it so people take their vacations notwithstanding the press of work, almost anyone can.
Put differently--the people who take the most vacation at my firm are those of us who work the most. Last year, we gave an associate seven weeks paid vacation, and she still billed over 2000 hours last year. You can make the time for vacation if you really want to.
several weeks of bedrest. She's already burned through all of her paid time off and most of her FMLA leave
Oh man, I know a couple of women who have gotten caught in this trap. It's really, really awful.
Six days! No vacation! Sheesh.
I'm a lowly hourly worker up here in the frozen north, so I don't get paid holidays, but I do get two weeks vacation - previously paid as a 4% "bonus" to my salary. Technically, I think, the employer is required to account for this amount and keep it aside, and then pay it out when I take my vacation. It's not a bad system, and I can't imagine not having any vacation at all. That would mightily suck.
Also, I'm with OneFatEnglishman - I can't imagine a company not allowing it's employees to take their paid vacation. Absurd.
Well, the research I'm thinking of relates more to the workweek than to vacation time, but I imagine the same holds.
The concept of "paid vacation" seems illogical to me for someone who is paid hourly.
Why is it more illogical than for someone who is paid daily or weekly?
The concept of "paid vacation" seems illogical to me for someone who is paid hourly.
Why? If they normally work a 40-hour week, you give them 80 hours worth of paid vacation.
Last year, we gave an associate seven weeks paid vacation, and she still billed over 2000 hours last year
Which comes out at a little less than 45 hours a week for the remaining 45 weeks or 10 hour days and no weekends, allowing for 10% unbilled fucking around time - strenuous, but hardly stakhanovite. I begin to suspect the good ole US of A of a culture of presenteeism rather than productivity.
Like, what the hell keeps us from some sort of single-payer national health plan???
Probably because in the past it would have disproportionately benefited brown skinned minorities. But now that its absence is fucking with both serious numbers of middle class white people as well as large corporations, progress on this front is inevitable.
It's because I grew up in a political and moral opinion milieu created by the kind of economists everyone hates, that's why.
The concept of "paid vacation" seems illogical to me for someone who is paid hourly.
How so? It is true that for me, like Will in 9, I really do not get paid vacations because I am technically self-employed. But for employees--whether hourly or salaried, getting paid at your regular 40 hour per week rate when you are working 0 hours in the week is a paid vacation.
Why does Cryptic Ned hate working stiffs?
Does anyone else remember that the achievement of the 40 hour workweek was only meant to be a stopping point on our way down to 32 hours or less? That our increasing productivity was supposed to be the means by which we as a culture were earning our way to greater leisure?
My grandfathers were both six-and-a half-day-a-week laborers (bricklayer, railroad porter) who benefited from union activity in their behalf, and I remember each of them predicting with satisfaction (considering the 5 day/week achievement) how much better everything was going to be for me and my children.
Yeesh! Man, have we fucked up their legacy to us!
Man, have we fucked up their legacy to us!
Yes. If this was LGM, that would have been a short answer to a simple question. And it applies around the world, even if it's more in your face in America.
I begin to suspect the good ole US of A of a culture of presenteeism rather than productivity.
Not in every respect, but there's a lot of that, yes. Thank god we have the internet now.
Which comes out at a little less than 45 hours a week for the remaining 45 weeks or 10 hour days and no weekends, allowing for 10% unbilled fucking around time - strenuous, but hardly stakhanovite.
I think that a fair amount of not-fucking-around time is unbillable, actually.
The railroad porter grandfather had a college degree he earned in 1906, but after going overseas to fight in WWI (at 27 y.o.) and with the onset of the Great Depression he grabbed at the surest job he could find and was never without work throughout the entire Depression. My grandmother never forgave him the comedown in status (from the loss of an inherited seat on the Chicago Board of Trade), but the great man *always* worked.
His advice during hard times: "Just keep swinging at the ball, son."
Following 40: He also gave money to every street person who ever asked him for it, and instead of time off with his family he sent the occasional telegram to his wife from his workplace at the downtown railroad station saying "thinking of you."
He thought he and his generation had earned us a little distance from that sort of wistfulness about lacking time with family.
RFTS: Agreed. By "fucking around time" I meant stuff like filing and time keeping, rather than blogging. IANAL, but in our company we have a personal target of 85% chargeable hours, so I was mentally ratchetting that up slightly for this clearly hard working and motivated individual.
I think 2000 billable hours in a year is too many to be healthy anyway in fact, but it's within the range I've reluctantly come to accept as normal. My point is that if that is what your star performer can turn in with 7 weeks leave, there's no excuse for everybody not to take 5.
Sorry. Too much sincerity. Way to shut down the snappy repartee of the blog, Ergo!
Or maybe everyone's just too danged busy working for The Man.
Not enough time off!
Ergono Mick, I am in no way the ultimate arbiter of the appropriate level of sincerity for this blog, but I didn't think that you displayed too much. I think that your grandfather's story is lovely--though sad.
BG, I think the fact that we've fumbled away the gains they thought they'd made makes our story much sadder than theirs. At least they ended with hope for the future (our present).
And of course I oversimplify an exceptionally complex economic story. But where did our intentions for a greater quality of life get so far off track... is my question.
As I never tire of mentioning, I get 4 weeks paid vacation a year, on top of having a 4 day, 32 hour work week, plus holidays (though if a holiday falls on a day I already have off, I don't get an extra day. Ripoff.) The only impediments to my taking large blocks of time (greater than two weeks, say) off at once is my own conscience and the desire to have more vacation later on. I actually prefer not to have too much time off at once--it's better for me to just have a day or two here or there. Of course, with a four day week, a day or two artfully deployed can feel like a lot more time away.
Oh, and I'm forbidden to be in the office after 6:30 or on weekends. I never want to leave this job.
JL, I'm torn between wanting to beat you senseless with a lead pipe and wanting to marry you. For whom do you work (vaguely if you must), and what do you do?
45: Mick, you raise an incredibly complex question. In our grandparents' day, all the consumer durable innovations - vacuum cleaners, washing machines, accessibly priced motoring - were presented as offering *more leisure*, to women, even. Not as millstones to keep them working ever longer hours so that they could fill their homes with them. When I was younger they said the same things about IT, and now look at us.
Is it just about guillability, or do I have to start believing in original sin?
Getting back to the original post, it would, in fact, be interesting to see data on how much vacation actually gets taken, and the class-based division of that. How serious is the culture and/or enforcement of taking that vacation in the other OECD nations?
I feel lucky in that I got my two weeks of vacation upgraded to three weeks after 5 years at my job; that plus a change in rollover policy means that I actually have five weeks to use up this year. The biggest difficulty is that my girlfriend, who I would like to take the vacation with, has a much stingier employer who provides 13 days of combined sick+vacation PTO, and she used it all up on a medical episode last fall.
OFE, somewhere along the way "leisure time" switched over to "piles of stuff." And I remember how offended I was when beepers were first distributed to us white-collar working stiffs (when I was still one) to make it "more convenient" for us to be responsive while maybe stretching that extra 2 hours off to see the kid's school play. This was before cell phones were widely available and I'd get beeped while on the El and out of reach of any phone--which made me seem inattentive to my duties rather than incapable of responding at that very moment.
As far as original sin goes, I think we have fumbled away our original blessing, and that's the origin of "original sin."
49: welcome to the consumptive society.
re: 48
In the UK at least I've never worked anywhere where people didn't take all the vacation time owed to them. Which usually meant in the region of 4 weeks paid vacation plus 8 public holiday days (or something approximately in that basic area).
My wife, however, is the manager at her place of work and sometimes she struggles to get cover for her holidays. As a result she's taken about 75% of her entitled holidays each of the past three years.
My attitude to the US job culture can be captured by a string of expletives followed by singing the Internationale in a loud voice.
Oh yeah, and the concept of combined sick/vacation time -- that can fuck off as well.
somewhere along the way "leisure time" switched over to "piles of stuff."
Sure, but the question is, how did they pull the switcheroo? And can they be prevented from doing it again?
My attitude to the US job culture can be captured by a string of expletives followed by singing the Internationale in a loud voice.
Me too, but unfortunately nobody else here knows the song.
53: As one who has been off sick for 5 weeks, and fully intends to take all his accrued leave after he goes back, I couldn't put it better.
52: Speaking of the Internationale, America the Beautiful has a line about "God shed his grace on thee." Maybe originally, but it's hard in the context of this subject to see a lot of grace at work. I look at the peaceful end to Apartheid in South Africa, which with its Truth in Reconciliation work seems at a distance the embodiment of gracefully resolving differences, then I look at the shoutfests of American politics and legislation, with the grindingly intractable nature of the problems we choose to step into for ourselves (Iraq, anybody?), and I ask where do problems like the subject of the current thread even find a place in line to be solved? I think that grace may have shed us long since.
No one is forbidden to take their paid vacation here, but some people are really strange about it. Two tiers up from me there's an intensely workaholic culture. My boss's boss took his family on vacation in Hawaii and didn't tell anyone--he apparently tried to cover his absence by sitting on the beach and working his crackberry nonstop, but his secretary snitched him out.
re: 55
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx7A3UYKXj4
[The definitive Chinese heavy metal version ]
55: Pity, because the usual American version is much better than the British one.
It's hard for me to imagine a situation in which a government would enact a law that gave employers less power over workers.
61: You mean here in the US, right? Because it's my understanding that it has obviously already happened long since to one degree or another across Europe.
re: 61
Well, in pretty much every historical case where they did, they were made to do so.
61: It's called "the balance of class forces", old son.
59: ttaM, that's awesome. I remember John Peel playing a Dutch rock version once (back to back with Hendrix' "Star Spangled Banner"), but I was never able to find it again.
46: I'm a curatorial division peon in a central New England art museum. I do a variety of things--one of the virtues of an understaffed institution--mostly centered around dry-as-dust research (provenance, cultural heritage issues, etc.) It's not all that exciting, but it's not bad. And a three-day weekend every week suits me fine. I've never worked a regular 5-day, 40 hour week; I don't know what I'll do if it ever comes to that.
In the US, it seems like any political benefit the average congressman would get from empowering workers at the expense of corporations would be dwarfed by the result that the corporations would turn against him and work to get him unelected.
Maybe it's different in countries where people are able to run for office without going into debt to corporations and super-rich "campaign contributors". Unfortunately, mandated bribery is a form of free speech, although it isn't anywhere else.
re: 58
My sister-in-law's crackberry slipped out of her pocket to the bottom of Cape Cod Sound last summer while we were sailing, and she said very calmly, "the gods have spoken."
So there's some grace to be found, here and there.
mandated bribery is a form of free speech
Yeah, I can see how that kind of fucks things up. This was obviously what the founders had in mind, yes?
68: what the founders had in mind doesn't seen to have much practical effect on anything (sure generates a lot of noise though)
66: See my earlier comments re: aggregation of power into fewer and fewer hands.
How do you break that chokehold? The unions are busted, mostly (union leadership was co-opted, really, when they didn't wind up in the concrete of Giants Stadium.) How to rally or organize any longer? We're comfort-addicted (see earlier comments re: "piles of stuff"), so can't be bothered to exert ourselves. I'm afraid all us whining about this will get us nowhere until things get a lot worse for everyone. Why do we have to wait until misery has already overtaken us to force change? I really would like us to follow examples of graceful social change (rare as they are) before all that happens, but as it stands I think we're doomed to resist change as a culture until the necessity is forced upon us.
How depressing. Time to spritz with MANDOM!
Because the founders believed themselves to be gods among men, they created a document called the "Constitution", unheard of in any other nation even to the present day, which was designed to be practically as inviolable as the Bible, its importance, derived from the superhuman status of those who created it, dwarfing all considerations of "common sense" and certainly dwarfing any concerns of those so disloyal to believe that the US might become a model for other nations which could later devise improved mechanisms of government.
71: "unheard of in any other nation even to the present day"
Not true. Even the Soviet Union had a Constitution a lot like ours--but they did not have a Bill of Rights, and that was the difference. No other nation I am aware of has declarative statements that "the Government SHALL NOT... SHALL NOT... SHALL NOT..." violate our basic rights, the way we do.
Too bad we don't have such definite statements curbing the abridgement of our rights by other aggregates of power, like corporations.
Antitrust legislation, gutted as it has been recently, goes only so far.
Boy is this a sore subject. I get over 5 weeks from the company I work for. But the client I work for day to day (I sit in government office-space) doesn't see that she owes me vacation. So until last year I was able to get days off here and there but never a week or more.
It only took me 4 years, but I finally said I am taking long (ha!) breaks. The client isn't happy that I am not available all the time. She is doubly unhappy when I go abroad. This week I am, again, on leave. I told her that if necessary she can reach me via the American embassy in Stockholm. BTW, Sweden is pretty cool.
And I am not so silly as to think specific corporations owe us--to anticipate the inevitable objection--but that fundamental humane ideals ought to lead us all toward the general betterment of people's lives.
And corporations do owe stakeholders in proportion to how much advantage they have by virtue of their influence in government (just to backpedal a bit.)
59: Hey, that's Tang Dynasty! I have their album from back in the nineties! I have all those China Fire albums!
I am at home with pink eye this afternoon--I went in to work, but the senior secretary sent me home. I was very, very suprised.
Because the labs are full of grad students and post docs (who are expected to work weekends and evenings completely unpaid) there is a culture of not taking vacation time at my job, even though it's at a university. I took a week last year and I'm certainly never doing that again--just a bunch of craziness to deal with when I got back. People are fussed if you take a four day weekend, and honestly, no one does it. You're allowed to build up 200 hours of vacation time before you're forced to take any, and that's the expectation. If you take half your vacation days (which would be five per year) it takes you about five years to build up to 200 hours. I've been here two and I have about seventy hours saved up rather than ninety since I took that week last year.
People are, in fact, fussed that I'm home today.
I'm beat because we had three weeks of really intense work; I got three hours of comp time for staying at an event from 6:45am to 6:15pm, taken on the morning afterwards, and even that was rather grudging.
I won't even tell you how little I make, although the benefits are awfully good and the people (except for their anti-vacationism) are pleasant and easy to work with.
The one thing I miss about academia is the freedom to travel without having to call it "vacation time." It's totally bizarre that being the person without a job makes me less free to take time off, but apparently tis so.
The entire concept of allotting X days of vacation time really annoys me anyway. So bean counterish. Really, however much vacation time one's company gives one should be a specified minimum, and whatever you take over that should depend solely on whether or not you're getting your work done to your and your boss's satisfaction.
(Re. vacation time for hourly employees, I admit to being proud of myself for having paid both housekeepers and nannies for 2 weeks' vacation because I thought it was the right thing to do.)
72: Canada has a roughly equivalent mechanism, fwiw.
72, 77: I perhaps detect a hint of sarcasm in 71.
I believe I work at the same university as Frowner and my experience with vacation couldn't be more different. I get 22 paid days a year alongside the 10 or so university holdidays and no one begrudges me the vacation time I take. Although I love this generous time off it is a real problem that the various job classifications allow for widely unequal vacation accural. It would infuriate me to work alongside someone who receives twice the amount of vacation I do for no apparent reason other than job title.
Really, however much vacation time one's company gives one should be a specified minimum, and whatever you take over that should depend solely on whether or not you're getting your work done to your and your boss's satisfaction.
That's how my company works. No one counts the vacations or sick days, and there's a corporate guideline of 3 weeks vacation per year as a minimum. In practice, most people I know take 3-4 weeks in addition to our 8-9 holidays (the office is closed whenever the stock market is). So long as your boss is happy with you, taking another day or week off here and there is never a problem.
Now if only I could get any longer holidays in, that'd be fantastic, but coordinating my work and school schedules with cheap airfare is absolutely impossible. At least there's a lot of long weekends available.
I suspect that the US has a large amount of regional and by-industry variation in the figures. I work in the SF Bay Area computing industry, and all of my employers have had quick builds to 3+ weeks of vacation per year, and relaxed standards about taking that vacation.
In general, I think that most Americans could get better vacation if they made it a priority. Perhaps the oddest thing is that we don't -- I've never known the PTO policy of a place I worked at until I got the new employee orientation manual, and I'm a guy who likes my vacation. It just seems like it's outside the script of stuff that you ask at interview-time.
78 true, but I failed to consider the importance of the Bill of Rights w.r.t. the rest of the constitution.
My partner gets 31 or 33 days now (started as 30, plus the extra for 10 years' service) plus 8 days public holiday. He's "academic/academic-related staff" in the medical sciences division at ttaM's university - the clerical etc staff at the same university get only 20 days plus public holidays (or did when I worked there - my dept though used to give everyone 30 days because they didn't think that was fair). He takes most of it, carried a few days over this year, and will again in October because we're having a 4 week holiday for Christmas this year.
His immediate boss - the most senior non-clinical post in the division - spent 3 weeks in Venezuela last year. I don't know if he took his other 3+ weeks, and I know he's often in work on a Sunday, but everyone is definitely expected to have holidays.
In general, I think that most Americans could get better vacation if they made it a priority.
In general, I think not. A lot of Americans have little control over anything dealing with their jobs. Beggars-choosers.
78: Oh, 77 was a response to 72, not the original. Canada's charter effectively works essentially the same way. Much more recent, of course.
The SEC requires that certain people in the financial industry take 2 consecutive weeks of once per calendar year, so that any fraud they might be perpetrating can show up when they're not at work. So in addition to 6 figure bonuses, many of those people are required by law to take a 2 week block of vacation every year.
Class warfare!
In general, I think not. A lot of Americans have little control over anything dealing with their jobs. Beggars-choosers.
Well, certainly "a lot" of Americans do have little control ovre anything dealing with their jobs, depending on how you define "a lot." I mean, if 100,000 people don't have control over their jobs, that might be a lot, but it's .03333% or so of the total.
I suspect that about 80%, plus or minus say 15%, of Americans could get noticeably more vacation per year if they made it their top priority. That's not to say that that means that one shouldn't consider the remaining 5-35%, nor that that 65-95% could get European levels of vacation.
I think you're overestimating how much leverage most people have in negotiating their terms of employment by a great deal. You like your vacation, and yet you didn't even ask about it before accepting your current job -- that wasn't because it slipped your mind, but because you know there's some risk that even asking about it would hurt your chances of getting an offer.
Seriously, do you know anyone at all who's ever successfully negotiated vacation/PTO terms other than what their employer offered? If the answer is no, as I suspect it is, doesn't that make the chance that 80% of Americans could negotiate better terms for themselves on an individual basis a little suspect?
Our CSO negotiated an extra two weeks of vacation time when he was hired. Of course, that's a pretty senior management position- I'm sure many upper managers do it all the time if they're in demand.
Mmm. But there are jobs that people take for lifestyle, and somehow they know that such jobs are lifestyle jobs. And yet, I doubt that they ask whether they will only have to work X hours, etc. I can imagine Epoch being right, though I'm not sure what that shows.
Epoch, I guess I need to speak slowly and distinctly. I'd say at least half of Americans have little control over their vacations. There are a considerable number who are underemployed or have to work two jobs, and plenty more who have poor bargaining positions or inflexible employers or both.
And no, underemployed people are not lucky people who get lots of vacations. They're people who have to take every minute of work they can get whenever it shows up.
88: With all due respect, I think it's a little presumptuous for you to tell me what I was thinking at my interview time. While my case may not be typical, it did, in fact, slip my mind. If I had thought about it, I would have asked -- I was kind of on the fence over whether I wanted this job for a variety of reasons, and the question was not whether they would want to hire me, but whether I would accept their offer.
I do, in fact, know of someone who negotiated their vacation terms, but just the one person.
My hypothesis is that if people were prioritizing vacation, they would probably get their vacation primarily by looking for companies that had relatively generous vacation plans, not by individually negotiating exceptions to their existing company's vacation plans.
I am nothing if not consistently presumptuous. I do think the odds were way in my favor, whether or not I was right about you.
But seriously, 80% of Americans don't have the luxury of deciding between jobs based on the vacation plan; they take jobs depending on what they can get hired for that will pay enough to keep them living indoors. There may be some haggling at the senior levels, but that's not a big chunk of the population.
A former co-worker (who occasionally comments here, even) negotiated an extra week of vacation when he took the job here.
To say that 65% to 95% of Americans could get more vacation time every year is just silly. In union or civil service jobs it's set by contract, most non-union people take what they can get, and in high-powered jobs you're expected to work 80 hour weeks and 50+ week years.
And yes, we are presumptuous around here, especially in your case, because frankly, your mind is an open book.
80% of Americans don't have the luxury of deciding between jobs based on the vacation plan; they take jobs depending on what they can get hired for that will pay enough to keep them living indoors
Gee, that number seems a bit like the result of a rectal extraction. While there certainly are people who have little choice about the jobs they have, lots of people make choices about their careers and workplaces based on lifestyle issues like how hard they will have to work. And vacation time is part of that. Whether or not one could have negotiated with their current employer over vacation time is not really the issue. Many (not all, but way, way more than 20 percent, I would guess) certainly had the ability to choose a career based on considerations like the tradeoff of salary and hours worked.
Ideal, while the number may have come out of an ass, it didn't come out of my ass -- I was responding to Epoch's surmise that 80% of Americans could get more vacation if they really wanted it.
"Had the ability" is basically a weasely way of blaming the victim. C'mon: when people choose what to study, they're not thinking in terms of future vacation time, and if they are, they're almost surely too young to be doing so realistically. I'd be willing to bet money that most people don't know at all what the work hours/climate is going to be like in X profession until they're pretty well established in it. Not to mention factors like social class--how many folks that get paid by the hour have any kind of realistic say over vacation time other than what they can afford + what their boss will put up with?
And there's that issue of context, as well. Two week's paid vacation is the American standard (which is crap), and a lot of places will make you work "up" to that over a period of time. You can believe with all your heart and soul that you'd rather earn less and take more time off, but you're constrained by what's available, what the local cost of living is, what the expectations of your workplace are, and a whole lot of other shit that you don't have any realistic kind of choice over.
What 96 said. My sister, bless her heart, chose to work at a restaraunt, babysit, and generally ski bum it rather than work for some DC consulting firm generating reports about the international semiconductor market. She didn't choose to wait tables, work the ski lift, go to grad school, do non-profit work, or sell mortgages, in large part because of vacation time, job satisfaction, and pay issues. Just because at no point did she tell whoever she was talking to about a job "Hey, I want two weeks more vacation" doesn't mean that she didn't get choose to have more vacation time.
rather than work for some DC consulting firm generating reports about the international semiconductor market
If she had that option, she's far from the typical American worker.
Epoch's claim was that at least 65% of Americans (and as much as 95%) could get better vacation, and he seemed to be saying that this could be done during hiring negotiations rather than by taking a different job.
That really overstates the amount of control she's got over her vacation time; she's got some, but she's had to trade it for what looks like a complete lack of job security and an awful lot of income. If at some point she needs more security, that tradeoff isn't going to be available any more.
Sure, you can make the trade (work as a temp and only accept work when you feel like it), but you have to pay an awful lot for it, and making that sort of trade shuts you out of most jobs.
Which is why I listed off the other jobs she did not take, most of which don't require any sort of substantial education (grad school excepted) and are all over the map.
Oh, I forgot, she also moved back home and lived with her parents while working her way up to management at one of those little coffee huts (i.e. outlasting a couple of people there working there part-time during vacation or while waiting to hear back from some other company).
"Had the ability" is basically a weasely way of blaming the victim.
If you think that the things you do in life are not the result of choices you make; sure, all life is about being a victim of "the man," and I am blaming the victim for her choices. I just view life quite differently from the way you apparently do.
Your sister sounds pretty atypical, and doesn't sound like she's raising a family.
65% to 95% is the issue. Some people can do it, but I doubt that 65% could alkl at the sam time, and certainly not 95%.
65% to 95% is the issue
To be clear, I certainly agree with JE to the limited extent that I find it highly unlikely that anything close to this percentage of people work in jobs where they could negotiate over vacation time. I just think this misconstrues the real issue, because it ignores other choices people can make about their careers.
Me too, but unfortunately nobody else here knows the song.
It's one of two songs I sometimes sing in the shower. I love that song.
Being a ski-bum and living with your parents isn't an option for very many people.
Restaurant work is nice when you're in your twenties but if you're still doing it when you're 40, by and large you're in trouble.
If you think that the things you do in life are not the result of choices you make
I think that the things one does in live are the result of the choices one makes, the choices one's parents' make, the social class one is born into, the personality one has, the options that are realistically available to you, the knowledge that you have at the time of the choice, the person that you marry, and a whole host of other shit including plain good luck and accident.
104: Oh come on. This whole conversation started with this claim:
In general, I think that most Americans could get better vacation if they made it a priority.
Which, if we're talking about individual actions, I think is pretty self-evidently wrong. If 'most Americans' made it a political and regulatory priority, we could probably organize to get more vacation, but Joe Individual generally doesn't have the choice between two jobs, one with four weeks vacation and one with two, that can otherwise sustain his needs, and saying that the reason he only has ten days of vacation and that only after he's been on the job for two years is that he doesn't really want the vacation is blaming the victim. Sure, he could quit, go relax for as long as he wanted, and then try to find another job, but his failure to do that doesn't mean he doesn't want the leisure.
This is not equivalent to a claim that people have no influence on how their lives turn out, which seems to be what you think you're responding to.
The specific jobs with time-flexibility are limited. The more people apply for these jobs, the harder they'll be to get. A niche exception is being treated as though it were a universal possibility. "Reliability" and "committment" are prime factors in most hiring. A lot of jobs look at you funny if you expect a 40-hour-week.
I was due to start getting a third week of paid time at Ma Bell not long after I left there, last year, but the company wasn't worth sticking around at to get that one week. Now I get two weeks and in a couple of years I'll get three. I find that the Puritan work ethic is abused and misused as a way to try to guilt people into not taking their vacation time. When "but we need you" doesn't budge someone then "don't you want to help us succeed?" gets tried as Plan B with an occasional "don't you want to be here to take credit for Thing X" variant. Former bosses who tried these approaches quickly became aware that neither of these has much effect on me.
101: Gee, John, it seems like my mind may not be quite such an open book: I explicitely said in comment 92 that I was talking mostly about choosing a company with a relatively generous vacation policy, not about negotiating individual exceptions to policy.
I freely admit that my 80% figure is completely based on pulling it out of my ass -- that's why I gave it a wide confidence rating. But if anyone's got any actual data that refutes it, they sure haven't put it up on this thread.
Note what I'm not saying: I'm not saying that 80% of Americans could get 4 weeks of vacation a year. I'm not saying that they could get more vacation just by asking for it -- I assume there would be trade-offs, whether something as simple as salary, or other benefits, commute time, work environment, all the stuff that we weigh when we look for jobs.
So the hell what, though? 80% of Americans could probably do a lot of things if they devoted their lives to it. Get a Ph.D., learn to fly a plane, buy a Mercedes, send their kids to private school, whatever. In a vacuum, this "could do it" factoid means nothing, and maybe even less than nothing since it seeks to obscure why they aren't doing it as things stand.
Well, yeah, no one's put up data refuting it -- what would such data even look like? That doesn't mean there's any reason to take it seriously.
That really overstates the amount of control she's got over her vacation time; she's got some, but she's had to trade it for what looks like a complete lack of job security and an awful lot of income. If at some point she needs more security, that tradeoff isn't going to be available any more.
Well, you have to make choices. Clearly most people can't just arbitrarily increase their vacation time; otherwise they'd have already done so. But the option to trade off income for vacation exists, it's just that exercising it seems so weird that whenever someone does, everyone says "but look at how much less money you're making!"
The specific jobs with time-flexibility are limited. The more people apply for these jobs, the harder they'll be to get. A niche exception is being treated as though it were a universal possibility.
Although if people are flocking to those jobs and taking leisure in place of pay, it seems possible that more companies will offer more leisure. Ideal seems to be saying something like, "You make the best compromises you can in your life, and that often includes a trade-off between leisure and pay." That seems sort of true. Most jobs/careers have trade-offs; academics appear to have to prioritize career over location to a much greater extent than non-academics, for example.
I don't think any of this bears on whether or not it might not be good to mandate a certain amount of vacation.
I think is pretty self-evidently wrong.
I think we have a disagreement over both facts and how to frame the question. Again, the question is not whether one can negotiate for more vacation time from one's employer [using the third-person in the desperate and probably foolish hope that no one with think I am attacking them and their choices], the question is can one make choices in life that materially affect lifestyle, including leisure time. I think the answer to that is a resounding yes. For example, I have a sister who for all of her adult life has worked in not very well paying office management jobs even though, since she is as smart as I am (at least), she could be a New York lawyer making a bunch of money if she wanted. Part of the reason she made that choice is that she has little stress, weekends off and generally can can concentrate on things in life that are important to her, none of which are work. Does she pay a price for this? Sure, she has never had much money (but she has always had enough to live). But she made a choice to have other things. Lots of people do. The problem, I think, is the attempt to frame the question as how can one get what one wants without having to pay for the choice. I think that is unrealistic.
Oh, and if anyone is interested, the cutting back on some sort of visa (H-2?) has driven the wage for dishwashers who can legally work in Jackson, WY up to $15 an hour.
The point is how much you have to pay. Your sister is probably cutting her lifetime income by 50% or better by bouncing among low-pressure jobs in the manner you describe. I doubt she could support a family, and unless there's family money to fall back on, I wouldn't be surprised if she has a difficult retirement. Obviously, you can get all the vacation you want if you're willing to pay enough; quit one job when you want a vacation, and go find another when you want to work again.
The issue is why, in America, does it cost so much to get more leisure -- arguing that if Americans really wanted the extra leisure, they'd pay for it whatever it costs, misses the point.
BTW, your sister sounds sort of awesome, Jake.
Jake:
Are you in Jackson? Bc a very nice female friend just moved there. Poor thing, so new, so lonely.
Actually, she sounds like my cousin Timmy, who also does the free-spirit restaurant/ski-instructor thing. Which, he's a great guy, but I worry about him.
re: 117. I agree. As noted above, I am pro-vacation. Part of the trade-off I made ot go to a smaller law firm (complex decision, not saying this was the only one) was time flexibility. Even though I work pretty hard (I do not think there has been a day so far this year--weekend or week-day that I have not done something billable), I have a lot of flexibility. Today is the second day this week I decided to stay home and work at home. I take off when I want, workload permitting. On the other hand, I get paid what a mid- to senior level associate gets paid at a big New York firm. I'm OK with the choice.
124: See, that's a choice--but it's a choice made within a limited set of options. Which ain't the same as saying you could have chosen to be, say, a gardener, after you got through law school and realized what the options there were.
what would such data even look like?
This.
I'm not in Jackson, but my sister is. For now.
Where she drives her 12-year-old Jeep Cherokee and saves the money that she used to spend on booze so that she can get a plane ticket to Nepal to be with her boyfriend (who couldn't get into the country because of the visa issue mentioned above) and still have enough left to rent some retail space and buy the equipment to open a coffee shop. Since apparently in all of Katmandu there are five places you can get espresso, and only three where you can get drip coffee, the rest being nescafe.
She is pretty awesome.
(I also think that a large part of why it costs so much to get more vacation time here compared to other places, is that if you're willing to not take any and enslave yourself to the man, you can make a lot more money than in a lot of other places.)
Apo, have I told you how much I love you lately?
Epoch, I think that your experience of the work world is pretty narrow. It just doesn't seem reality-based to me.
The point of the whole thread is that getting that leisure time is harder and costlier in the US than almost anywhere else, not that it's impossible.
115: Is that a sincere question? What would data to refute my claim look like? Well, I mean, it would look like data which supports any of the contentions you've made. For example, you suggested in comment 93 that "80% of Americans don't have the luxury of deciding between jobs based on the vacation plan; they take jobs depending on what they can get hired for that will pay enough to keep them living indoors."
If you pointed us at some data that suggests that 50% or so of Americans were on the edge of homelessness via their local living standards, that would certainly further your argument. Or, say, a study of how many job offers the average person gets during a period of job-searching might be illuminating. Or a study of how much vacation time swings in a given class of jobs would also be interesting.
Or similarly, your claims in 120 are unsourced.
But, I mean, surely you knew that?
Anyhow, here's a link to the report that Ezra originally got that minimum vacation time grant from: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/working_time_2007_05.pdf The graph, I think, is the least illuminating part of it, and the whole thing is pretty interesting.
it's a choice made within a limited set of options.
We have a strong factual dispute here. There are lots of things I could do if I wanted. A couple of years ago, I came within a hair of quitting and trying to live on my pension or be a school teacher. We all have lots of choices. A big part of it, I would argue, has nothing to do with money. It has to do with social expectations. One who is smart and educated is not supposed to be the office manager for a small contractor like my sister. Many see it as a failure to take the low paying, low prestige route to leisure.
And wait a second... are a bunch of lawyers and academics really trying to tell me that you can't make tradeoffs between how much money you make and how much vacation time you get?
(I also think that a large part of why it costs so much to get more vacation time here compared to other places, is that if you're willing to not take any and enslave yourself to the man, you can make a lot more money than in a lot of other places.)
Yeah, I think that's right. Again, that isn't to say that we shouldn't have laws about vacation, or that The Man doesn't screw people over when he can, etc. But people do walk away from jobs all of the time, even at tremendous financial cost to themselves, precisely in the way that Ideal describes, or even more dramatically. Of the many people not included in this group--like the gardner--my strong suspicion is that the bigger worry is too much leisure--30 hrs/wk not 40, etc.--rather than too little per job.
130: grant s/b graph, sorry about that.
Of the many people not included in this group--like the gardner--my strong suspicion is that the bigger worry is too much leisure--30 hrs/wk not 40, etc.--rather than too little per job.
If 'too much leisure' means 'no health insurance and not enough money to support oneself,' sure, that's exactly what's worrisome about cutting back for people in the lower half of the income distribution.
Some people can make those choices, but I doubt the 65-95% number. I'd say 30-40%. The second point is that getting time off seems to be harder and costlier (in terms of tradeoffs) in the US than Europe, not that it's absolutely impossible.
I'm not sure where Epoch comes from asking for hard data. And Jake's sister seems to be both atypical and also running a big risk. I know someone who played that game successfully for a long time, but she's now 63 and destitute.
Most jobs I've ever known about are pretty inflexible on vacation. If you're earning a lot of money, you can afford to step down to a different job, but the median household income is $46,000 and the bottom 25% is $22,500 or less. With kids it would be pretty hard to step down from $46,000.
Basically I did a version of what people are talking about. I took a low-stress, low-paid job with good benefits and good vacation time. So it's definitely possible, but I more or less left normal human society when I was 21 and never really reentered, and I also think that what I did in 1975 would probably not be possible today (certainly not at the place where I did it.)
John: I didn't ask for hard data. LizardBreath pointed out that my numbers were completely pulled out of my ass (in response to Idealist mentioning the same about her). I acknowledge that this is true, and simply point out that it's not like I'm making up numbers and putting them up against hard data. You guys are just as much talking out of your asses as I am. If you feel like getting some real data, that's cool. If not, that's fine, I'm happy to continue with our anecdotal crap. I'm just saying, nobody here has some kind of unimpeachable source.
You're right John, there aren't as many positions available in the field of "hermit/penitent" now that the West has been won. On the other hand they may be opening up again as the Dakotas empty out, if one knows how to set up a geothermal heating system.
141: Sure, but not all anecdotes (does your 80% even qualify as an anecdote) are equal -- some are incredible and some aren't.
Are you insulting my pie chart, Epoch?
144: I'm scared to follow your links at work.
Percentage of chart which resembles Pac-Man.
Isn't reading Epoch's mind fun?
147: Vast and uncharted wildernesses, is my mind. It's no wonder you get lost.
uncharted wildernesses
You can use my pie chart. I'm finished with it now.
if you're willing to not take any and enslave yourself to the man, you can make a lot more money than in a lot of other places.
Bar-raising bastards.
120
"The issue is why, in America, does it cost so much to get more leisure ..."
Does it cost a lot? I think if you are willing to take a x% pay cut in exchange for x% fewer hours worked it is not that hard to arrange. My employer for example offers regular part time jobs based on 20-32 hours/week. There is also an unpaid leave of absence program.
Teaching is of course a profession which offers a lot of leisure time which is generally ignored when people whine about teaching salaries.
But it's generally not x% pay cut in exchange for x% fewer hours, it's more like 2x or 3x or more.
152
Where are you getting 2x or 3x? It appears to me that I could switch to half time for half pay with my current employer. 2x would mean half time jobs pay nothing which isn't true.
Teaching is of course a profession which offers a lot of leisure time which is generally ignored when people whine about teaching salaries.
This may be true, but it is not without its complications. Before I left the academic game, and one of the reasons I did so, I deeply resented having to spend a significant chunk of my Sunday afternoons preparing for Monday morning. It may not have figured into a greater total number of hours, but it irritated. I was so happy to leave that behind for a job that, unless I actively desire to do otherwise (which happens), doesn't demand anything of me outside of regular hours.
Gee, I forgot to mention above that I also get 3 "bonus days" a year to take off as I will. And that number will increase if I get enough seniority. On the other hand, some of the talk of tradeoffs between leisure and pay ring true--I'm in the non-profit sector, after all. Still, the situation of people like me, who go to work for non-profits with endowments able to support good benefits (even a pension plan) but with lower (though still middle class) pay differs greatly from people getting along through accepting relatively low status to menial employment. My job is low status only if you figure by the standards of "what would have been the optimal results of my finishing the doctorate" or "which jobs earn the most"; in the eyes of my (largely blue collar) SO's family, I'm the house swell (although heavy lifting actually is sometimes part of my job, strangely enough.)
146: Pie I have not yet eaten.
I could switch to half time for half pay with my current employer
That's nice.
Highly educated and skilled workers can sometimes make this tradeoff fairly evenly.
For most people part-time jobs are likely to come without medical benefits, profit-sharing or retirement plans, training programs or any chance for advancement.
That was fine for me when I was in my twenties. Wouldn't work out so well now.
Teaching is of course a profession which offers a lot of leisure time which is generally ignored when people whine about teaching salaries.
Shearer, in addition to the all day teaching part, good high school teachers spend a shitload of outside time on grading and prep work.
I think if you are willing to take a x% pay cut in exchange for x% fewer hours worked it is not that hard to arrange.
Utter fantasy. Just off of the top of my head, many workplaces (such as Walmart, the largest employer of Americans) only provide health insurance to full-time employees.
(But it seems that James doesn't work at Walmart nor does he know anyone who does.)
Utter fantasy.
Word. Were you a rich kid or something Shearer? You don't seem to live in the same reality as the rest of us.
If you are living on the margin and can't afford a pay cut then the opportunity to trade pay for more leisure time is not worth much to you. But your fundamental problem is your low pay not that your working hours are too long.
It's true I don't work at Walmart but I don't think you guys do either. Is the complaint about lack of vacation time limited to Walmart workers and the like? If so, it is really about the distribution of income since if these workers made more they could afford to work less.
No, the complaint is that (1) what works best for employers--smaller headcount, more hours per employee--does not work as well for employees; and (2) employers generally have much more bargaining power than employees, so the structure of employment is generally driven by what works best for employers.
James, large generalizations about the American labot force should be true of the American labor force, not just the people talking and their friends. You sound like you could be a David Broder pundit right now, with your deep understanding of the American people.
There have been a lot of people getting forced overtime they don't want or need. It's been a major issue for labor.
162
Employers would prefer not to pay anything also. I don't see why employers would use their bargaining power to drive up hours worked instead of driving down pay if workers would really prefer less pay for less work. And why don't more highly paid workers with bargaining power ask for less pay for less work?
As for employers prefering small headcounts don't people also complain about employers who rely on temporary workers?
I don't see why employers would use their bargaining power to drive up hours worked instead of driving down pay if workers would really prefer less pay for less work.
For someone who's pulled "it's Econ 101" on this very blog, you seem to be pretty unfamiliar with a little something called "fixed costs."
Yeah, if you're going to argue about something it really helps not to be pig-ignorant about it. This isn't sophisticated stuff.
As for employers prefering small headcounts don't people also complain about employers who rely on temporary workers?
This is true, and is a different problem. From what I can tell, employers of unskilled labor always prefer to have eight employees who work 25 hours a week than five employees who work 40 hours a week.
But these 25-hour-a-week employees don't get to choose when their "vacation" time is; their schedules are constantly changing at the whim of the employer. So they don't actually have more leisure time, at least not in a way that lets them plan to take advantage of it more than four days in advance. Nobody bargains to be in their position.
166
I know what fixed costs are. They are what you incur learning a trade or looking for work. They give many employees an incentive to work long hours.
How much does it cost an employer to hire someone? Not all that much as shown by businesses which operate with lots of temporary workers and high employee turnover.
Here, it would be 19 hours, because employers have to provide health insurance to employees who work 20+. But yes, that's a separate problem involving jobs with low skills, low pay, low or no benefits, and no security.
How much does it cost an employer to hire someone? Not all that much as shown by businesses which operate with lots of temporary workers and high employee turnover.
Yeah, if you're hiring strawberry pickers. Back in the country we live in, a hell of a lot of jobs are in fact full time, and require some training, have a bit of a learning curve, etc. The fixed costs (I can't believe I'm having to explain this) I'm referring to are health benefits, training, unemployment insurance, payroll taxes, etc. The incentive is to get people salaried, then work them as many hours as possible. One of the more obvious examples here is Bush's push to revamp the Fair Labor Standards Act in 2003 to help business's reclassify shitloads of employees as exempt from overtime.
171
Training is a fixed cost. Health benefits are not, my employer's part time deal reduces the employer's contribution to health insurance proportionate to the reduction in hours. Payroll taxes are not, they generally are a percentage of pay. I believe this is true of unemployment insurance as well. Of course there is some fixed overhead per employee but it is not a significant barrier to jobs with 10% fewer hours and 10% less pay if many people would prefer such jobs.
Also you are ignoring some potential advantages of reduced hours, the percentage reduction in output is likely to be less than the percentage reduction in hours worked.
I'm an idiot for engaging you on this.
Shearer, pay attention to where you write "my employer", and then go re-read 163.
I don't see why employers would use their bargaining power to drive up hours worked instead of driving down pay if workers would really prefer less pay for less work.
Well, it actually happens. The fact that you don't understand why is your problem.
10% fewer hours? Where is X's employer going to find someone who wants 10% of X's job? Maybe a high school student? Not if the job requires any skills. And why would the employer want to pay the fixed costs associated with that 10 percenter? Since presumably that 10% is necessary, it's going to be done by X's colleagues, who are going to go to their manager and complain until he decides it's much more touble to accommodate X than it's worth. Anybody who's watched the dynamics of an office trying to work out flexible schedules for working mothers, for example, knows this. That's why parental leave generally has to be legislated, because unless employers are forced to make the accommodations, it's not going to happen.
Guys, Shearer is applying the Physics 101 approach to this. Feel free to keep arguing if you're enjoying it; just understand what you're arguing against.
Anybody who's watched the dynamics of an office trying to work out flexible schedules for working mothers, for example, knows this. That's why parental leave generally has to be legislated
Round 4,872 of this discussion currently underway via a NYT article.
176: Is this where, if one mathematician can prove the theorem in one year, 365 of them can solve it in a day?
You all are being inconsistent. On the one hand you correctly point out that Finland is doing ok despite mandating a lot of time off. Then on the other hand you claim offering more time off would impose crippling costs (in addition to the reduction in hours worked ) on American businesses.
Just how much do you all think offering 3 weeks vacation instead of 2 would cost a typical American business? I expect it would increase labor costs by about 2% because of the 2% reduction in hours worked. What do you think? And what estimate are you going to offer when trying to push mandated vacation through Congress?
