Most American citizens can only dream of family leave
McCobbs says that his boss carefully checks the vacation schedule. But not to make sure Edmund hasn't taken too many days off, but to ensure he is regularly resting. Moreover, the company, which works in real estate and infrastructure projects, has special people whose duty is to come up with various tricks to lure employees out of the office and make them enjoy life.
The culture where rest is the norm was initially a real shock for McComb with his American worldview. In Australia, he explains, "people go home and immerse themselves in their 'real' life, without fear of any organizational consequences from management for not being at work." Such an attitude was a real revelation for him.
According to federal laws, working Australians are guaranteed 20 days of paid vacation per year. This is in addition to seven paid public holidays. In the past year alone, McComb has traveled to Fiji, Western Australia, and Florida. When he worked at the insurance and financial services industry association six years ago, he had only 10 days of paid vacation annually.
"I had to earn them during the first year, and only then could I use them," he recalls. "But I was never allowed to take more than five consecutive vacation days."
A country where vacation is a privilege
The United States is the only developed country in the world where vacation is treated as a privilege, not a right. While Austria, Germany, Italy, and Spain provide their citizens with more than thirty days of vacation annually, not counting paid holidays, the United States provides them... zero days.
Americans can thank the "Fair Labor Standards Act" for this. This legislative relic from 1938 regulates the maximum number of working hours per week, overtime, minimum wage, child labor, but it does not mention paid leave at all. This means that the decision about paid vacation, sick leave, and public holidays is a matter of negotiation between employer and employee.
Although many American companies grant their employees between five and 15 days of paid vacation per year, a recent study by the American Center for Economic and Policy Research found that one in four private sector workers has no paid vacation.
Carrie Stephens, who works behind the bar, is one of them. Stephens, now 31, works 38 to 45 hours a week at a brewery in Charlottesville, Virginia. She says she has no paid sick days or holidays.
"Even if I had paid vacation or sick leave, and if that pay were based on an hourly rate, it would be minimal," Stephens said. She recently got a raise from $2.13 to $3.50 per hour, but most of her income comes from tips. The minimum wage in the US is $7.25 per hour, but by law, the hourly rate for tipped workers can be lower.
Carrie Stephens estimates that in the six years she has worked for the brewery, she has taken five vacation days a year. She has to ask for vacation months in advance, usually spending it on short trips paid from her own savings. "I clearly feel when I need a vacation because at those moments both my patience and my disposition toward customers are about to burst," Stephens said.
Culture of fear
Even for those Americans who have paid vacation, actually taking it can be a Herculean task. The basic principle of American work culture is that people often feel that even if they dare to ask for time off, they will be branded as lazy or disloyal. Many of them don't dare to use their vacation rights year after year. Experts say this contributes to an imbalance between time spent at work and life outside it, which is rarely seen in other developed economies.
A study published in April on Glassdoor.com, which truly opens eyes to this issue, found that the average American worker uses only half of their annual paid vacation. 28% of working Americans surveyed said they do so because they fear their position in the company will worsen, while 17% said they fear losing their job. Another 19% said they don't take long vacations because they want to have an advantage over colleagues in the competition for promotions.
Long struggle to change legislation
From time to time, one legislator or another in the US launches a campaign for workers' right to guaranteed paid leave. Congressman from Florida Alan Grayson has several times donned the armor of a fighter for the right to paid rest.
The Democratic congressman believes that stress accumulated at work leads to absenteeism, low productivity, and health problems. The financial losses incurred by businesses as a result amount to $344 billion a year. In 2013, Alan Grayson introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives called the "Paid Vacation Act," which, among other things, required companies with more than 100 employees to provide full-time workers with one week of paid vacation each year.
The "Paid Vacation Act" languished in the relevant committee for more than a year. In 2009, a similar bill backed by Grayson failed. Every government employee among Grayson's colleagues in the House of Representatives, whose votes are decisive for the passage of this law, receives one month of paid vacation annually.
Some companies in the U.S. oppose the trend of turning the country into a nation deprived of rest, where employees have no vacation. These firms give their workers more vacation days. Often, the management of such companies even demands that their employees take vacation. At the same time, congressmen are among the few Americans who have a guaranteed number of vacation days and are on nearly equal footing with citizens of other developed economies.
"If I had never left the U.S., the idea of a month-long vacation would never have crossed my mind," says Edmund McComb, a Florida native who moved to Sydney. "But in Australia, it doesn't seem out of the ordinary."