Whole Life Times: You’ve Gotta Fight for Your Right to Vaykay

You Need a Vacation

• The U.S. is the only industrialized nation without a minimum annual leave statute.

• On average, we work nearly nine full weeks (350 hours) longer per year than our peers in western Europe do.

• A Department of Labor–appointed “Committee on Vacations with Pay” called for a national minimum paid leave law as far back as 70 years ago.

• Access to vacation leave is declining each year. A third fewer families are vacationing together than did in the 1970s. (Bill Doherty, University of Minnesota)

• Vacations have been found to reduce the risk of heart attack in men by 30 percent and in women by 50 percent. (Brooks Gump/Karen Mathews; Framingham studies)

• Studies have shown that vacations eliminate job burnout, but it takes two weeks for that process to occur. (Hobfol, Shirom)

• Only 14 percent of Americans will take a vacation of two weeks or more this year. (Harris Poll)

• Last year, 43 percent of Americans did not take a single week off. (Conference Board Study)

• One quarter of Americans receive no paid vacation. (CEPR)

March 2008 | Healthy Living

You’ve Gotta Fight for Your Right to Vaykay

The battle is on to save the Great American Vacation

By Andy Anderson

Americans are exhausted. For too many of us, the 40-hour workweek has ballooned into 50 or 60, cutting into our eight hours a night and compromising our abilities to maintain our health, spend time with our families, eat properly or keep up all but the most immediate meaningful relationships. Those of us lucky enough to get two weeks of paid vacation seldom take it all, lest we fall behind or our bosses and coworkers peg us as a slacker.

So what’s the solution? Legislation, says author and documentarian John de Graaf. De Graaf, a frequent speaker on overwork and over-consumption, is the national coordinator for Take Back Your Time, the campaign to redress what he calls the American “time famine.” The number one action item on Take Back Your Time’s agenda is to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (home to minimum wage and overtime pay laws) with the “Minimum Leave Protection, Family Bonding and Personal Well-Being Act,” which would guarantee three weeks of paid time off after one year at a job.

“As a society, we’ve really been opposed to legislation and government mandates, and I think unfortunately we’re paying a high price for it,” explains de Graaf. “Other countries understand that to make the market work best you have to set some rules and minimum standards that assure people can live basic, healthy lives and take care of themselves.”

Currently, 127 nations have minimum paid-leave laws, points out de Graaf. He cites Europe, where every nation offers at least four weeks of paid time off after a year on the job, as a prime example of successful policy making. “There’s simply no other industrial country in the world that doesn’t have a law requiring vacation time,” de Graaf says. “I don’t know why we would be right and everyone else would be wrong.”

In comparison, only 14 percent of Americans take a vacation of two weeks or longer, according to Take Back Your Time. In addition to the obvious stress and health-related ramifications, de Graaf argues, overwork is also an environmental issue. When people are stressed or busy with work, they’re far less likely to take the extra time to recycle or pay close attention to the eco-consequences of their actions.

Take Back Your Time is currently in talks with an unnamed senator who is interested in introducing the legislation in the near future, de Graaf reports, but until then, he’s on a mission to raise awareness.

“We should be having a national conversation about this — we’re not even talking about it as a country,” de Graaf laments. To join the good fight, visit timeday.org.

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