In many parts of Europe, it’s common for workers to take off weeks at a time, especially during the summer. Envious Americans say it’s time for the U.S. to follow suit.
Some 66% of U.S. workers say companies should adopt extended vacation policies, like a month off in August, in their workplaces, according to a Morning Consult survey of 1,047 U.S. adults.
It’s funny, all these articles about how Americans want universal health care, vacations, four-day work weeks, maternity leave.
Yet nothing ever changes. Even a little bit.
That’s because politicians are so far separated from the average American. Some of them are so old and senile and have been in power so long, they don’t even realize how bad it is for the average American, and on top of that, because they don’t think it’s as bad as it is, they don’t care.
We don’t have these things because 50% of the population is dumb as bricks and is voting against their own interest.
It’s not even 50% tits our fucked up districts, and also it’s gotten like this because of legislation to defund education. But younger voters are becoming more informed, change can happen. It will take effort and time though.
I have always wished that requiring congressmen work a minimum wage job in their district that they have to look for and apply to like the rest of us while out of session would do anything. Deal with some Karens to humble them properly.
It’s the money in politics. Doesn’t matter how young or old the politicians are.
I’d say it depends but the older ones are more likely to be influenced by money
The overwhelming majority of working class adults want these things, but also the overwhelming majority of working class adults also work for large corporations who do not want these things (because it costs them money/profits). Guess who has more money to buy off politicians? Walmart/Amazon/Target would work together to never let these beneficial policies go through congress. It would be worth it to them to spend literal billions to prevent it, because it would cost them billions in the long run.
The sad reality is we don’t really live in a democracy. It’s an oligarchy that allows us to think we are in control.
98% of the people who vote are voting for repressive corporate culture.
The people who don’t vote can’t afford to miss a day of work, and even if they did, they know the people they have to choose from won’t do anything to change it.
Therefore these polls are meaningless.
We have to have voting mail in and at the booths as federally mandated. Washington State and quite a few others do this and we get a pamphlet that lists each candidate, their website, a pic and their policies. This should be the bare minimum for every state.
The think tanks funded by rich people saying “They want to take away your guns/cows/statues etc” and “unions suck” are better at this than we are.
We can want all we want, but a whole pile of the media is owned by the 1% and what they want is the status quo.
Conservatism is literally, don’t change anything.
The only way to vote for these issues is to vote to form a union.
Racism and bigotry are a hell of a drug.
Because the American Oligarchy do nothing to actually improve the lives of the average person and deflect, blame, and fear monger against the other party to distract from their own corruption. It’s both sides of the political spectrum in this country and it’s getting pretty old.
everyone wants it when you survey people that want it
(not that i disagree)
Approximately 50% of voters will vote for a political party that views any such reform as communism.
It’s actually quite a bit less than 50%, but their votes have a bigger impact because of a broken system.
sure, but effectively they deadlock the system and prevent any structural reform. Also, national polling currently has close to 50% of the voting population supporting a trump second term. We can’t even get the Democratic Party to support universal public healthcare. The ideological delusion, the willingness of the people to support a system that makes their lives anxious and miserable, cuts across both political parties as well as the general population.
So much this. We have an antiquated and ridiculous system that gives the regressives far, far too much of a voice.
Socialism is a very nice son of rationalism. It is time for a review
I’ve worked in companies with a presence in various European countries over my career. Whether or not everyone takes Summer leave at the same time very much depends on the company, and the country. I specifically remember working with a Finnish contractor firm who planned to have no billable time available at all in August, from anyone. But our offices in France and elsewhere never fully shut down in August, they were just very lightly staffed. Everyone took some multi-week summer holiday, just not the whole place at once.
It’s not just summer leave, either. There are people all over the world having kids and going out on maternity (or even paternity!) leave for months at a time. When my wife and I had our kids in the US, I didn’t get any extra paternity leave, and just used saved-up PTO. I particularly remember that my wife had to stay in the hospital for a bit after my first kid was born, so the two weeks I had saved up flew by in a flash. I recall my boss strongly encouraging me to dial in to a conference call on that last PTO day, and when I did his boss lashed into me for taking so much time off. I started sending out resumes shortly after.
On the other hand, when the Europeans I worked with later got their summer or parental leave, their Project Managers just dealt with it, and if it meant their schedules had to slip, they slipped, no temper tantrums required. And I think that is the key difference. American bosses and PMs are much more likely to get away with assigning blame for schedule slips downward, perhaps because not as many people are unionized.
Many types of workers in scandinavia is not as heavily unionized either. Perhaps the ones that are not, enjoy a form of herd immunity from worker abuse from the ones that are.
There’s a lot of unionisation. Further, there’s industry-wide collective agreements, which pretty much do the herd immunity thing.
I’m on the UK and taking paternity leave in December. By using some of my holiday allowance plus a Christmas shutdown I’m turning my 4 week paternity leave into 8 weeks off in total. It’s hardly a holiday (seeing as we’ll be lookin after a newborn and my other half will be recovering from a c-section/childbirth) but god-damn I am looking forward to two months of just focusing on mu family.
Just an anecdote related to the first part of what you said: I’m in the US, PTO season seems to be December at my company. Both because some portion of people’s PTO hours will expire at the end of the year, and obviously because of being adjacent to Christmas and new year.
Who is the remaining 34% that don’t want this? Brown nosing middle management cunts? Pto policies at a ton of companies in America are abhorrent. Just 2 weeks ago, I had a mental breakdown over my workload and had to call in only getting further behind the next day.
“Gee mdot, you could sure use a vacation!”
Ya. No shit. The problem is, I’ve only been here for 6 months and don’t have much pto banked AND if I were to take longer than a day off, I’d be so behind that it wouldn’t even be worth it. Luckily, someone on my team gets back from maternity leave in 2 months. Even then, it’s going to be hard to leave because of my workload and, for the first 2 years I get 10 days of pto per year. That’s it.
“Gee mdot, you should get a new job.”
Ya. No shit. But I just started here 6 months ago, I don’t want to look job hoppy and they compensate me well. Also…as with many Americans, health insurance is tied to our jobs. My insurance is solid and the specialist I see for a chronic health condition is in network. I do not want to change.
Millions of Americans are probably in a similar boat as I am and it sucks. Stuck in a job dealing with shit company “policies” all because they pay me well and give me insurance. They don’t treat me well, though.
Sorry for the rant, clearly I needed to get that out lol.
34% of Americans responded “grind my body into the ground, capitalism daddy”
I don’t think they even responded, their mouth were probably full.
Why do 34% of Americans not want paid time off work?
Because they will think of someone else who “doesn’t deserve it” getting it and mald.
Something, something socialism is bad.
deleted by creator
Who are the other 34%?? Who is like “yeah idk a consecutive 30 days off every summer actually, legitimately sounds BAD to me”?
European here. Like me, many people from the poorer european countries don’t have any place to go on vacations in august. Everything is expensive and there’s always a rush to booking. For someone who doesn’t have a “family summer house” and can’t afford to rent a place in august, mandatory august vacations (like it’s usual here) is just a waste of vacations. Too hot and no place cool to go. Also, august is typically the month where everything is flooded with small children. If you’re not too fond of that either, then august is really the worst month to be on vacations. ALSO, it’s lovely to work in august, because usually your workplace has AC and most of your colleagues are hundreds of kms away, trying to buy a melted ice-cream for 40min in a crowded beach.
Couldn’t you just stay home and fuck around and just not work?
Three possibilities. a) people who bought into the propaganda that being exploited by your employer means you’re more dedicated. b) the temporarily embarrassed millionaire effect. They’re willing to take the exploitation on the off chance they might be the one exploiting people in the future. c) they already are the ones exploiting people.
“sounds like COMMUNISM to me for sure buddy !”
It’s not too surprising that a country that had a civil war over ‘employment laws’ is a bad place to work.
They have dropped that “take a month off” thing like it’s some crazy regular thing that happens.
I don’t know about the rest of Europe, but in the UK you normally get 25 to 30 days of Annual Leave, companies often give extra days for long term or exceptional service, some have salary sacrifice options to buy more. Where I work you can even win some in charity raffles. The expectation is that you book them in advance with your boss when you want to use them.
If you want to save it all and take a month off then so long as the boss is okay with it, then off you go. But you won’t have any leave days for the rest of the year.
That’s double the amount of time off I have here in the U.S.
And I only get a week of paid sick days, which I’ve already used up due to an illness which hasn’t even been properly diagnosed yet.
I even have to make up time if I go to the doctor.
In the UK the government mandates that your employer pay you whats called statutory sick pay for up to 28 week should the illness require it, which is a minimum of £109 a week.
In addition, your continued employment by the company is protected and they cannot fire you for being sick.
In reality the company will often support staff members for much longer if needed. That’s just how things are expected to be. I’ve had a member of my team go on very long term sick with leukemia and he was supported by the company for over 4 years while he was in and out of hospital, letting him work part time and from home when he needed to, at his discretion.
Expectations on companies here and the protections offered to worked in regards to thier employment and unfair dismissal situations puts the “land off the free” to shame
Not surprised. I would honestly move there tomorrow (my father was English and I was born before the 1980s cutoff, so I could get citizenship), but I don’t want to abandon my dogs.
Yep - it’s a tired misconception I first encountered working for an American 20 odd years ago.
While it’s true that it’s difficult to get much out of France Spain and especially Italy in august - it’s because it’s holiday season - not because everyone is gone for a whole month
25 to 30 days of annual leave is unheard of in the US. And it translates to 5-6 weeks, which is well over a month. It’s common in a lot of European countries to take 4 of those weeks off in a single continuous summer break, usually August (some prefer July to avoid the August crowds). Yes, there’s a misconception that everyone in Europe takes August off, it’s ultimately up to each individual how they allocate their days off, but there are companies that do assume everyone will take August off and all but shut down during that month.
I don’t think its a Federal requirement to offer employees any vacation or sick leave in the US. For many office jobs you have to earn leave time over the course of months or years - it’s not unheard of to have zero leave time the first six months of employment.
Paid sick leave, no, but your job is protected by FMLA.
Same in France.
25 days off is 5 weeks (because days off would only be the work days.) That’s over a month.
Most positions in the US seem to give 10 days of annual leave a year. Some may also include sick pay as well.
It’s even more than 5 weeks if you take days off adjacent to bank holidays. One can easily stretch it to 6+ in many countries.
It’s sad. The real issue is an odd application of American capitalism and, believe it or not, unions. Yes, those same people that take credit for the 40 hour workweek and weekends prevented guaranteed vacation benefits.
Back in the New Deal when so many benefits were being codified, the unions began lobbying against going too far. The reason was their fear that if employers were forced by law to offer too good of benefits, then people would have no reason to join a union.
Of course, union membership has since collapsed, so we are now all stuck with the fallout and employers thinking 2-3 weeks of PTO is somehow enough. And never mind that as it turns out, European nations generally have higher union membership anyway.
Here is a source: https://www.npr.org/2023/08/17/1194467863/europe-vacation-holiday-paid-time-off
The OOO full August sucks because every near touristic place is crowded and 2+ times more expensive.
I never pick August. But my company doesn’t force me to pick August either.
your vacation has been approved for August
My family lives in a picture postcard beautiful area of southern Germany. I can’t visit in summer because it’s too popular.
Or, if you are a rail worker, more than one day off a month. Not, one day plus weekends, mind you, one day period.
I have, what most in the U.S. would consider, a very generous PTO allotment (accrues at 19.5 hrs per month) and I could not even fathom asking for an entire month off at a time. Who are these 34%?? Crap wait, I think I just realized. 🤦
I have “unlimited” PTO, but that just means I have as much PTO as my manager thinks I deserve :/
It’s mind boggling that there’s no minimum PTO law in the US
Not when you remember that capitalism is the state religion.
Praise Cash, from whom all blessings flow.
There’s not a law because most professional jobs have PTO at level that would meet any mandatory minimum level.
So it would affect nothing for those jobs and be beneficial to others to have those minimums
