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8 Weeks Holidays

21:51 / 08.11.03

Here's the thing. My SO's father has a friend who teaches a work standards course in Switzerland in which he claims that people should have, at a bare minimum, 8 weeks holidays a year if you want to increase their productivity and job satisfaction. I'm trying to figure out a good way to spread this idea about the protestant work ethic-infested lands of North America, not just for the extra holidays, but for peace of mind for my fellow wage slaves. Anyone got any ideas?

I'm invoking Barbelith as collective thinktank. This is something I'm really feeling strongly about, mainly because I've only had my new job for a month and it's already a daily grind.

Zoom.

22:09 / 08.11.03

I have no idea. but once you come up with something, let me know, and I'll be hard at work pushing for it!

23:10 / 08.11.03

Sorry, Zoom. Short of a Bolshevik Revolution, I can't see how you'll persuade 'em. Getting unionised doesn't have the same connotations over there, does it? In the NHS we get five weeks' hols and ten days Public Holidays, two of which I can take when I like. Hence, I'll be spending January in Indochina and may just stay there under a palm tree, watching the surf for the rest of my days.

My US friends only have two or three weeks' Annual Leave once they've been in post and performing for several years. When I was investigating going over there to work the money they offered was astonishing but they offered only one week off per year. For crying out loud! You have more Public Holidays though, no? And my friends who work in the mental health field have a statutory number of "sick / mental health days" they can take, no questions asked. I just have creative ideas for "working at home" days.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

02:26 / 09.11.03

Zoom, the studies have all shown that while the 8 weeks would help productivity, in the US it will never happen. Employees here do not take the vacation they are given because if they do, they are thought of as "disloyal" and not as productive as those who work through the year.

The US is a very weird country when it comes to this, when the people in charge get to take a LOT of time off and the worker drones do more and more to make it worse on themselves. The job I have now is supposed to be a 40 hour job, but my supervisor has told me that the company expects that I put in over 50 hours a week (and since I am salaried, I get no pay past that 40th hour), and that I probably will not be able to use my vacation until I get near the cap, when I will be asked to take a day off every week or so until I get it down to a "managable level."

The other thing that just amazes me is how the poor in this country routinely vote for politicians who flat out say they will not be helping them. They work against unions that would make their lives better and their workplaces better.

It baffles me, and the only analogy I can think of is that all of us here in the US are running for the cliff just as hard as we can to jump off with all of the other lemmings.

04:47 / 09.11.03

I know of people in North America that get a good amount of vacation, but they all work in salmon canneries. There, you get 10 months off a year, and about $12,000CDN for 2 months (16-18 hours a day for those two months...) Enough to go live on a beach in Mexico for the other 10 months?

05:27 / 09.11.03

Y'know, it's that disloyalty thing and it's ilk that gets me. My brother is always saying how hard he finds it to talk to his boss about a raise. BUt really that's what we're there for, is to make money.

Screw it. I've only been at my job a month, but I'm pretty certain that because I'm going to be there a quarter of a year, I get a quarter of my holidays for this year (3-4 days, but better than none). I'm going to take them.

I think being made to feel bad about taking holidays is just going to make employees feel more slack about a job.

Y'know, forget what I'm saying now. It's 2:30 am and I'm not thinking straight.

Zoom.

03:39 / 10.11.03

By sending copies of the study to CEOs, with yellow highlighter on the word "productivity".

That's how.

The idea is something of a staple in financial column writing - topic pops up, people react a little (but not enough to do anything), and it gets filed away until the next time.

And: Enough to go live on a beach in Mexico for the other 10 months?
... with their eight remaining fingers.

03:59 / 10.11.03

... with their eight remaining fingers.

Actually, the one guy was missing a couple of fingers due to a few seasons in that other oh-so-attractive position of 'Alaskan King Crab Fisherman' Didn't stop him too much from enjoying the other ten months, I'm sure...

04:31 / 10.11.03

unless he had been wanting to perfect his appalachian claw-hammer banjo technique, that is.
then that would be ten long months.

13:36 / 10.11.03

The only way to get N.American companies to give employees more vacation time is to convince them they can make millions of dollars from it. In the short term.

I wish I could link to where I read this but it was months ago... sadly, some studies on this subject asked Americans what they'd do with the kind of vacation time most European workers get - and they said they'd get another job and work right through it.

11:32 / 12.11.03

Is there a legal minimum of holidays and such in the US?

My (UK) company is strangely now having a competition (to raise money for Children in Need) where you can win a day off.

15:45 / 12.11.03

I think it's a general '2 weeks per year' for most of North America... it's the case for most of Canada, except maybe Quebec and BC, who sometimes enjoy leftie governments...

16:24 / 12.11.03

I'll tell you what, my company is prety progressive, and starters still only get about 2.5 weeks paid time off beyond the 2 weeks worth of scattered holiday days off throughout the year. I've been there going on 7 years and I'm up to 4 weeks/year now + the 2, with the cap (after being there for something like 15 years) at 6. So at best after tenuring for many years, we still only just approach the 8 week mark. And that's pretty good for most places.

some studies on this subject asked Americans what they'd do with the kind of vacation time most European workers get - and they said they'd get another job and work right through it.

Land of the greed, home of the cronicly undersatisfied. Sadly, I work through a lot of my holidays too. I need the bonus to help get ahead on the everpresent debt that was issued to me as a sign of manhood when I entered college, and which will likely follow me to my grave to plague my descendents, like many of my fellows. America suffers from a need to maintain certain standards of living requireing so much work you can't even enjoy it. I'd be perfectly happy in a stable backwater town with an Internet uplink. I might even get there within the next 20 years, by my current financial planning, though it may require tieing my wife to a post while I'm out and applying an electrical shock each time she uses her Mastercard to get there. Such is life in the land of consumerism.