Why is America the 'no-vacation nation'?
By A. Pawlowski
May 23, 2011
(CNN) -- Let's be blunt: If you like to take lots of vacation, the United States is not the place to work.
Besides a handful of national holidays, the typical American worker bee gets two or three precious weeks off out of a whole year to relax and see the world -- much less than what people in many other countries receive.
And even that amount of vacation often comes with strings attached.
Some U.S. companies don't like employees taking off more than one week at a time. Others expect them to be on call or check their e-mail even when they're lounging on the beach or taking a hike in the mountains.
"I really would like to take a real, decent vacation and travel somewhere, but it's almost impossible to take a long vacation and to be out of contact," said Don Brock, a software engineer who lives in suburban Washington.
"I dream of taking a cruise or a trip to Europe, but I can't imagine getting away for so long."
The running joke at Brock's company is that a vacation just means you work from somewhere else. So he takes one or two days off at a time and loses some vacation each year. Only 57% of U.S. workers use up all of the days they're entitled to, compared with 89% of workers in France, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
Brock's last long holiday was more than 10 years ago, when he took a two-week drive across the country...
For the full article, go to:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/05/23/vacation.in.america/index.html?hpt=C2
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Now that I work for a German company, I get 6 weeks of personal paid-leave a year plus national holidays. And if needed, I'm still able to get paid-leave for jury duty, bereavement, or family medical emergencies (such as this past week when my wife had foot surgery and I had to help take care of her mother since we couldn't find anyone to help out).
OCU
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