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More Than Half of US Workers Didn't Use Up Their Time Off Last Year (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: Americans, famously, take far less vacation time than their European counterparts: less than 17 days, on average, compared to 30 days in France, for example. But for many Americans, that's apparently all the time they need. More than half of all US employees (54%) didn't use all their days off last year, working a combined total of 662 million more days than required. Of those days, 206 million couldn't be rolled over or cashed out, meaning they were forfeited, costing the equivalent of $66 billion, according to a report (PDF) from Project: Time Off, a group funded by the travel industry. While it's a group with a strong interest in promoting more vacations, their findings are still revealing about America's unhealthy reluctance to take time off. Almost 60% of US workers who don't take their allotted vacation say they fear the amount of work they'll have to return to, according to the survey of 7,331 working Americans. Others (47%) say they stay put because they believe no one else can do their job, or because they want to impress their bosses with their dedication (36%).
US workers are absolutely terrified of taking time off lest it gets used against them in a review and they get fired and replaced at a moment's notice. How many people really think anyone at Netflix or elsewhere takes advantage of the ludicrous notion of 'unlimited holidays'? But hey, the American dream........
A lot of other people (and myself) have combined leave (sick and vacation) hours. I don't use all my leave because you never know when you might be sick, and if you get laid off it's nice to have some extra money that you get by cashing in your excess PTO hours.
In the US, we reward hard work with promotions and higher salaries. In Europe, they just tax the wealthy while the six hour work days and bans on checking email outside of work decrease productivity. It's hard work versus socialism taxing successful people. One of these leads to a strong economy, the other to massive debt. There's no incentive to be successful in Europe, anyway, because the government will just take your money away with taxes to pay for ridiculous social programs that would be unnecessary if people just had jobs and worked 40 hour weeks.
- snruter rotsac
Either this post is ironic, or you are so deep in the tank you don't even know there's a tank.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Just because you "have" vacation on paper doesn't mean you can actually take vacation.
No. It means you should take vacation, which is a concept that fewer and fewer Americans can grasp or understand.
Some time away from the thing in your life that creates some of the worst stress and physical abuse would probably benefit an individual greatly. It would benefit an entire society greatly if that mentality were to become infectious, and help reset US workplace expectations and respect for what the hard working employees do provide when they are there.
Even if you could not actually afford to "go away" on vacation, just relaxing for a few days can have a considerable benefit.
That's because in America Gaslighting is the status quo especially in corporate America. It takes this form: "You are weak and should fear job loss if you don't work 80 hours a week." Basically, the labor shortage that was brought on by the Great Recession which was brought on by the Foreclosure crisis scared people to death. Corporate America wasted no time using this as an opportunity to terrorize the work force into being "more productive" with complete disregard for employee health. Also, this isn't really news. The good news is we are about to hit a boom cycle hopefully. Boom/bust economics folks.
We'll make great pets
(This is a generalization, I don't want to see hundreds of posts stating that they are the exception)
In general Americans will define themselves on what they do. When meeting a new person, one of the first questions asked is what do they do for a living. We use the answer of this question to help define and place themselves in society. Before you realize how unfair this is, other cultures, will make the same judgments based on family, religion, race, political standing, their dress, their car...
Being that what we do for work is a key part of our identity, we prefer to spend a good portion in enforcing and strengthening it. While the numbers show the opposite, taking time off, we get the perception that we will be considered lazy, not a team player, and not productive if we take too much vacation. So we usually keep these vacation days, not as vacation but as emergency time off days.
Also we subconsciously control our work environment so we necessary as an individual to the institution, and poorly sharing your information with other workers. So if you take time off, you get back with a weeks worth of work that you will need to do, being an other intensive to not take time off.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
For those unfamiliar with the employer "benefit" of "Paid Time Off", it's a system where your "sick time" and "vacation time" are pushed together. So you get to make choices like "should I stay home with this fever/cold/bronchitis/stomach flu/kidney stone OR do I get to see my family at the holidays this year?" and "I already paid for that cruise, I'll just bring in four boxes of kleenex and power through". I get that PTO is an accountant's wet dream, combining all those liabilities into one column on the balance sheet. In reality, it becomes a fantastic way for everyone to bring their germs into the office and spread their sickness and being ineffective at work when they should be at home getting better, so they can see their family at the holidays. My employer says "if you are sick, stay home", and there's no number of "counted" sick time. Some years I've not taken a sick day, other years I've been out two weeks. It's not like kidney stones or bronchitis were the same as sipping a drink out of a coconut on a tropical beach, or that I planned it.
Those poor, abused millionaires!
After all that heavy taxing at the end of the day all they have left is their millions.
Would someone please think of the millionaires?
Funny because US debt is about 20 trillion and EU 12 trillion. I guess all that vacation saving and hard work is not paying off.
Time you don't take off before you quit has to be paid out. Now, to make sure that your company CAN actually pay the time they "owe" you if you quit today and they go bankrupt the same day, your company has to stash money in government bonds to the tune of what they'd have to pay their workers if all of them went out the door today.
Calculate about, say, 25 vacation days per worker, for a workforce of, say 10,000. Let's be conservative and say that a day/person is about 100 bucks.
Can you see how companies can have a HUGE interest in their workers actually going on vacation, and doing it as early as possible?
I MUST spend my vacation every year. They now even made it a bonus-valued goal, not to spend my vacation days and letting them roll over threatens my annual bonus. And since March I get weekly reminders from HR that I still have 10 unplanned days and that beautiful days are coming up, and whether I don't feel like taking some of the upcoming Fridays (with Thu being a holiday) off to enjoy a 4 days weekend.
I kid you not.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Either this post is ironic, or you are so deep in the tank you don't even know there's a tank.
Not that you could be troubled to even hint at why he's incorrect, and instead lazily attack the messenger.
No, I indeed could not be troubled. I gain no benefit from futile attempts to disabuse strangers on the Internet of their ignorant beliefs. But, since you bothered to respond, I'll count them down.
In the US, we reward hard work with promotions and higher salaries.
This is patently ridiculous. I hope I don't have to demonstrate the myriad examples of hard-working people not being promoted or getting higher salaries. Look at the people who clean your office, or pick your lettuce for examples.
In Europe, they just tax the wealthy while the six hour work days and bans on checking email outside of work decrease productivity.
Obviously Europe does more than tax the wealthy, and people work more than 6 hours a day (Yes, Sweden experimented with a 6 hour work day). Slightly reducing productivity (if a ban on after-work email even resulted in that) is not really a huge deal.
It's hard work versus socialism taxing successful people. One of these leads to a strong economy, the other to massive debt.
This is quite simplistic, I hope you would agree. Europe has a strong economy and the US has massive debt. I'm not saying Europe is better, or has no debt, or that the US is not hard working or does not have a strong economy. I'm just saying the OP has a very simplistic view of a complex interplay between business, labor, the social contract and the role of the state.
There's no incentive to be successful in Europe, anyway, because the government will just take your money away with taxes to pay for ridiculous social programs that would be unnecessary if people just had jobs and worked 40 hour weeks.
Again, this is ridiculous. There are many wealthy Europeans. This idea that taxation keeps people from being productive and building businesses, that they will just sit on their hands because taxes are just too damn high, is not borne out by evidence. The poster also ignores the fact that Capitalism has manifestly failed to provide for the majority of the population. Many people work 40 hours a week and still need social assistance. So the assertion that employing people at 40 hours will eliminate the need for social programs is just plain flat wrong.
As I said, the post is either sarcastic, or just stupid. I hope it is now more clear as to why.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
In some other country, our unions fought hard for us to have proper holidays. Now I take 2 (two) 15-days off, paid, during the year. We also have a 33% bonus added for spending during vacation. I take 15-day at every 6-month and come renewed for working even harder. Would never accept to work as a horse in US receiving carrots for that. My off-life is more important than work, always.