Untitled Document
Last year Mary Lou Eckart
took her first vacation in five years, a trip from her home in Decatur to
see her grandchildren in Florida. But the Illinois state government, which
pays her to care for a severely disabled teenage girl, provides her no paid
vacation time. So Eckart took the girl — and her work — with
her. She faces a similar bind if she gets sick. “I
just had an incident two weeks ago,” she says. “I had an
inner-ear infection that I didn’t know about, and I passed out. My
17-year-old daughter covered for me while I recovered. I get no paid
vacation, no time off, no sick leave. But if they put these clients in a
nursing home, I know that is very expensive. I’d love to have a
vacation. I’d love to be able to get away. I’d love to have
someone fill in for me. I feel like we deserve more than what we’re
getting.”
Eckart’s story is all too common: Nearly
one-fourth of American workers have no paid vacation or holidays, according
to a recent study from the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and
Policy Research, and nearly half of all private-sector workers have no paid
sick days. But if Eckart were living in any other industrialized
country, she would be legally guaranteed at least two weeks’ paid
vacation and — in 136 countries — from seven to more than 30
paid sick days. The United States is the only rich country that does not
mandate paid vacations and paid sick days, and Americans who are afforded
such benefits enjoy far less time off than do workers in other wealthy
nations. Americans now work more every year, on average, than
workers in any other industrialized country (except for a virtual tie with
New Zealand). With women working longer hours each year, the average annual
work time for a married couple is growing steadily, and family time —
including the crucial bonding experience of vacations — has suffered.
Full-time workers in much of Europe typically take
seven to eight weeks of vacation and holidays each year —
that’s double the American average for full-time workers. Overall,
the average private sector worker in the United States gets about nine paid
vacation days and six paid holidays each year. Low-paid, part-time, or
small-business workers typically get far fewer, sometimes none. The same
holds for paid sick leave: Seventy-two percent of the highest-paid quarter
of private-sector workers get paid sick days, compared with only 21 percent
of workers in the lowest-paid quarter.
Why do workers in other
rich countries have more paid time off? Mainly because laws demand that
employers provide it. The European Union requires its members to set a
minimum standard of four weeks’ paid vacation (covering part-time
workers as well). Finland and France require six week’s paid
vacation, plus additional paid holidays. Most countries require workers to
take the time off and employers to give them vacation at convenient times.
Some governments even require employers to pay bonuses so workers can
afford to do more than sit at home on vacation. On top of that, unions in
Europe and other rich industrialized countries — whose contracts
cover as much as 90 percent of the workforce — typically negotiate
additional time off. Meanwhile, the standard workweek is slightly shorter
in many European countries, and workers retire earlier, with better public
pensions. Until the early ’70s, European and American
workers logged similar hours. But the pattern then drastically diverged,
with Europeans getting more vacation time, around the same time that U.S.
income inequality began growing. In the United States, corporations gained
the upper hand against workers and their declining unions, and the
Democratic Party started shifting away from working-class concerns. In
Europe, stronger unions and left political parties pushed for shorter work
hours. In some cases, as jobs were lost when traditional industries were
restructured or work was outsourced, unions saw reduced work time as a way
to share work, but more often unions were continuing the battle to share
wealth in the form of more leisure, which had started a century earlier
with the movement for an eight-hour day — the goal of Chicago
protesters in May 1886, whose demonstration ended in the Haymarket
Massacre, repression of the labor movement, and designation of May 1 as the
international workers’ holiday. The difference in work hours between the United States
and most industrial countries “is exactly a manifestation of the same
forces driving broader inequality,” says CEPR economist John Schmitt,
pointing to deterioration of the minimum wage, pensions, public services,
health insurance, and wages under pressure from globalization,
deregulation, privatization, and attacks on unions. “Workers haven’t been able to translate
higher productivity gains into higher pay or benefits, and they’ve
been unable to address the time crunch.”
“People in the United States don’t even
understand what could be possible on this issue [of paid time off],”
Schmitt says. “This is one of the most important ideological
victories of the right in the last 30 years: to persuade us we aren’t
rich enough to treat workers well. We’re incredibly rich, getting
richer every year, and we have plenty of resources to pay adequate wages,
pensions, health insurance, and vacations, but we’ve chosen to give
that money to the top 5 percent.”
Economic growth takes different forms in industrial
countries and has different beneficiaries. For example, Europe has nearly
caught up with — and many countries have pulled ahead of — the
United States in labor productivity (the output from each hour of work),
the key measure of an economy’s potential.
In recent years, however, American workers have
rapidly increased the amount of goods and services they produce each year
in comparison to Europe. These two measurements have largely diverged
because Europeans have been enjoying more time away from the job, just as
they’ve been enjoying a more egalitarian society.
According to Harvard economist Alberto Alesina,
Europeans are happier and have less stress and insecurity, which is good
for health and longevity. Studies in the United States, for example,
indicate that taking vacations cuts in half the risk of heart attacks for
men. Longer, mandated vacations haven’t undercut the competitiveness
of other rich countries, and there’s evidence that they increase
labor productivity. Plus, recent increases in the U.S. gross domestic
product haven’t significantly helped most Americans: The super-rich
have captured most of the income gains. An accurate calculation of the
gross domestic product — subtracting such costs as crime,
environmental depredations, militarism, and declining social trust —
would actually show that growth in economic output has brought few, if any,
real gains in welfare for American society. Indeed, CEPR economists David
Rosnick and Mark Weisbrot argue that Europe’s shorter work hours help
the environment by reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Most Americans would be
better off with more paid vacation and leave, but inequality, insecurity,
and the competitive rat race drives people to work even harder, often just
to keep their heads above water. It’s very difficult for individuals
to demand more time, even if the limited polling available suggests that it
would be popular. Major gains will only come from an organized movement and
changed laws. One organization, Take Back Your Time, founded by writer and
documentary filmmaker John de Graaf, is trying to persuade presidential
candidates to support its proposal for mandating three weeks of paid
vacation for all workers. “I think the political figure who would
pick up on this issue would find great resonance,” de Graaf says, but
so far nobody has.
At this point, more modest proposals have a better
chance of succeeding. U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and U.S. Rep. Rosa
DeLauro, D-Conn., have introduced the Healthy Families Act, which would
guarantee seven days of paid leave for all workers to deal with their own
or a family member’s illness. Beyond the obvious help to the
individuals who need care, such legislation would help businesses
economically. Rather than putting in an unproductive day at work spreading
communicable diseases (or sending a sick child to spread illness at a
child-care center), workers could just stay at home, and it would reduce
the employee turnover that results when worker take unauthorized, unpaid
sick days. Five states have mandatory programs for temporary disability
insurance to cover income losses from short illnesses, and last November
San Francisco voters approved the first mandated paid sick days in the
United States. The Working Families Party in New York is now campaigning
for paid leave for new parents and adults caring for ailing relatives, a
protection California passed in 2004 (thereby strengthening the unpaid
family and medical leave federal law provides). Mandated paid sick days would help workers such as
Elnora Collins, a home-care worker in Chicago: “If you get sick, you
go to work sick. If you show up for work, you endanger your patients. If
you don’t show up for work, you get no pay. I recently lost a whole
day’s pay because I ended up in a hospital for an overnight stay. It
was an anxiety attack, like a heart attack. It’s very frightening.
And then, when you look at that paycheck, you really cry.”
Compare the work time and leisure in the United States
with that in other rich countries, and we all have good reason to share in
her tears.
David Moberg is a senior editor at Chicago-based In These Times.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2007.
