A no-vacation nation

It's called the land of the free, but the US certainly doesn't offer its workers much free time. Some 28 million Americans get no paid holidays, writes Sean O'Driscollin New York

When Kilkenny-born attorney Colleen Kerwick began working with a New York law firm, she was so used to Irish ways that it never occurred to her to turn up on St Stephen's Day or Good Friday. It wasn't until she had been doing the job for two years that someone pointed out to her that those were "valuable" days that many people in the firm wanted off. Eventually, she moved to another firm that has many European clients and has an easier work schedule.

"I've found a very happy medium between the US and Europe," she says. "But many New York lawyers are expected to bill 10 hours a day, five days a week with very little time off and it really causes a big strain after just a few years."

The average US worker, campaigner John de Graaf likes to point out, has far less holiday time than medieval European peasants.

"Peasants had over 100 feast days for saints and they worked very little during the winter. Overall, they had far, far more time to themselves than modern-day Americans," he says. "One of Karl Marx's jokes was that the Reformation abolished saints in heaven so that they could abolish feast days on earth."

De Graaf, co-author of pro-worker rights book Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, was so incensed by workplace treatment that he set up his own organisation, Take Back Your Time, to win greater holiday time for Americans. The organisation also promotes its message with T-shirts that carry the slogan: "Medieval Peasants Worked Less Than You." This August, the 28 million Americans without any paid holidays are struggling to find time off for just one week's holidays.

The US is the only western democracy which does not guarantee holiday time by law. (More than 130 countries, by contrast, have passed legislation guaranteeing holidays.) There is such a macho anti-vacation time culture in the US, according to CNN, that many workers are reluctant to take the average nine days of paid vacation they are allowed.

Analysis by independent economists has shown that in 2005 US workers turned down a total of 1.6 million years of vacation time to which they were entitled. If that 1.6 million years were placed in the life story of one person, it would take them back to the Tertiary Epoch, when sabre-toothed tigers roamed America and Homo Erectus was still finding his feet in Africa.

SO WHY, IN such a globalised economy, does the US workforce lag so far behind Europe? The huge difference with Europe, De Graaf believes, is that Europeans stuck to the social contract model, with unions, employers and the government working closely in the national interest.

In the US, after the euphoria of Roosevelt's New Deal, employers did everything they could to break the social contract, breaking up the unions and throwing money at right-wing election candidates. In its place came a new philosophy, summed up by President George W Bush as the "ownership society", in which Americans had the "freedom" to spend their money on holidays, healthcare and education as long as they worked hard. "The president calls it the 'ownership society', I call it the 'you're on your own-ership society'," says De Graaf.

Another major problem for Americans, the pro-holidays lobby has found, is that Americans don't travel much and are indoctrinated from a very young age to believe that the US has it better than anyone else in the world. In Europe, by contrast, workers are keenly aware of how much holiday time is available in neighbouring countries. With increased holidays, European are at productivity levels that tired, over-caffeinated American workers couldn't hope to match.

Joe Robinson, founder of the Work to Live Movement and author of several books on workers' rights, said that EU employers save themselves billions of dollars a year by allowing employees more holiday time. "Independent studies have shown that at least two weeks' holiday time cuts the heart attack risk in men by 30 per cent and by 50 per cent in women," says Robinson. "We know that burnout costs five times more money to remedy than the average malady, yet employers are still resistant to change."

Robinson likes to take a non-combative approach with employers, pointing out worker productivity plunges after five to six hours and that workers are far more creative after a summer holiday. Some companies he has worked with have had big success, such as Jancoa, a professional janitor company in Cincinnati, which had such low employee motivation that they were 40 people short and had a dizzying employee turnaround. The company claims morale improved hugely once the company went up to a three-week paid holiday, although the SEIU union had begun a campaign against the company in 2005 after it was cited for not paying overtime and had refused to recognise unions.

And yet the prevailing culture remains that in the US, you work hard and you will get what you want, and holidays are for the French.

THE MOST STRIKING example of the gulf between the US and Europe is seen in a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research called No Vacation Nation, published in May. It found that 25 per cent of all private-sector workers do not receive a single day of paid holidays from their employers. In contrast, it found, Europeans are legally guaranteed at least 20 paid vacation days per year, with several countries guaranteeing 25 or 30 days.

The gap greatly increases when you throw in public holidays. The US does not guarantee any paid public holidays, whereas most affluent countries, including Ireland, guarantee between five and 13 a year, on top of the paid vacation time.

The report's co-author, John Schmitt, calls the lack of paid holidays in the US "a national embarrassment". His report found that, while US workers enjoy no protection, Ireland's 1997 Organisation of Working Time Act provides for four weeks (20 working days) annual leave.

Ireland also enjoys a generous sprinkling of nine public holidays, compared with 13 in Austria, Italy and Portugal and zero in the US. When one adds paid leave with public holidays, Ireland is about mid-range in the total of 21 OECD countries studied in No Vacation Nation, tying with Denmark with 29 days, compared to 35 in Austria and Portugal and, of course, zero in the US. Irish workers living in the US are keenly aware of the difference with friends and relatives back home.

For Kerwick, working hard in the New York law firm, she can't help but notice that her brother gets "oodles more vacation" than she does, as well as many more days off for Christmas and public holidays. "It's the old story. In America you live to work, in Europe you work to live," she says. "I'm very lucky where I am, but a lot of Irish people find it hard to adjust to the US lifestyle."

Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, which campaigns for greater holiday time, sees a major cultural difference in the US. "The US has always boasted of having a pioneering, individualistic spirit. In Europe, there is greater value put on your personal life and there's a presumption that there is value to life outside of work."

But perhaps the system is finally starting to change. The Families and Work Institute's research has shown a marked shift among younger workers, who have seen their parents worked to exhaustion and rank home life as more important than work.

"The generation coming up now are the first to be raised by working mothers, and that has a lot to do with it," she says. "They have seen how difficult that can be. People are finally starting to stand up and question what it's all about. The days when employers could flatter us about our 'individualistic spirit' could finally be drawing to a close."

How does Ireland compared when it comes to other developed countries when it comes to paid annual leave and paid public holidays?

Austria and Portugal

Guaranteed paid holidays: 22 days

Guaranteed public holidays: 13 days

Finland

Guaranteed paid holidays: 25 days

Guaranteed public holidays: 9 days

Ireland

Guaranteed paid holidays: 20 days

Guaranteed public holidays: 9 days

Japan

Guaranteed paid holidays: 10 days

Guaranteed public holidays: Zero

United States

Guaranteed paid holidays: Zero

Guaranteed public holidays: Zero