News

Approximately 50% of voters will vote for a political party that views any such reform as communism.

51% support slower employee response time outside of work hours

Uh, what? That does not compute. Either it's work, or it is not work (and I don't respond to anything, and don't get contacted in the first place)

Then don't vote for Republicans.

I've worked in companies with a presence in various European countries over my career. Whether or not everyone takes Summer leave at the same time very much depends on the company, and the country. I specifically remember working with a Finnish contractor firm who planned to have no billable time available at all in August, from anyone. But our offices in France and elsewhere never fully shut down in August, they were just very lightly staffed. Everyone took some multi-week summer holiday, just not the whole place at once.

It's not just summer leave, either. There are people all over the world having kids and going out on maternity (or even paternity!) leave for months at a time. When my wife and I had our kids in the US, I didn't get any extra paternity leave, and just used saved-up PTO. I particularly remember that my wife had to stay in the hospital for a bit after my first kid was born, so the two weeks I had saved up flew by in a flash. I recall my boss strongly encouraging me to dial in to a conference call on that last PTO day, and when I did his boss lashed into me for taking so much time off. I started sending out resumes shortly after.

On the other hand, when the Europeans I worked with later got their summer or parental leave, their Project Managers just dealt with it, and if it meant their schedules had to slip, they slipped, no temper tantrums required. And I think that is the key difference. American bosses and PMs are much more likely to get away with assigning blame for schedule slips downward, perhaps because not as many people are unionized.

34% of Americans responded "grind my body into the ground, capitalism daddy"

Why do 34% of Americans not want paid time off work?

It's not too surprising that a country that had a civil war over 'employment laws' is a bad place to work.

I know lots of us people with "unlimited time off" type contracts. No one ever takes more than a week because they are afraid that their bosses wouldnt like it.

The other 34% of adults surveyed were middle management.

Who are the other 34%?? Who is like "yeah idk a consecutive 30 days off every summer actually, legitimately sounds BAD to me"?

They have dropped that "take a month off" thing like it's some crazy regular thing that happens.

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but in the UK you normally get 25 to 30 days of Annual Leave, companies often give extra days for long term or exceptional service, some have salary sacrifice options to buy more. Where I work you can even win some in charity raffles. The expectation is that you book them in advance with your boss when you want to use them.

If you want to save it all and take a month off then so long as the boss is okay with it, then off you go. But you won't have any leave days for the rest of the year.

It’s sad. The real issue is an odd application of American capitalism and, believe it or not, unions. Yes, those same people that take credit for the 40 hour workweek and weekends prevented guaranteed vacation benefits.

Back in the New Deal when so many benefits were being codified, the unions began lobbying against going too far. The reason was their fear that if employers were forced by law to offer too good of benefits, then people would have no reason to join a union.

Of course, union membership has since collapsed, so we are now all stuck with the fallout and employers thinking 2-3 weeks of PTO is somehow enough. And never mind that as it turns out, European nations generally have higher union membership anyway.

Here is a source: https://www.npr.org/2023/08/17/1194467863/europe-vacation-holiday-paid-time-off

German here: I have yet to witness these "European-style" vacations mentioned in the post title.

Most workplaces seem to frown at people taking >2 consecutive weeks of vacation, esp. if they don't have kids and do it in main travel season / during school holidays. Handing in ~3 weeks of holidays often at least needs some kind of explanation to the team-lead, e.g. "I have school kids who have their summer holidays and we need to keep them busy until school starts again."

I have yet to see a single company going easy on someone saying "I'll be off all of August KTHXBYE".

I’m gonna assume the remaining 33% prefer to have a vacation other than summertime.

As an American, I want that sweet sweet Netherlands lifestyle so bad in the US.

A lot of people seem to be confused by the "entire month of August off" thing, there is a bit of background to that, namely that factories shut down production in August for 2, sometimes 3 weeks. I'm not sure if this is a general thing, but all the factories that I worked with across Europe were doing this.

It's mind boggling that there's no minimum PTO law in the US

My cousins from Holland just came to Canada for a 6 week vacation. Can't imagine just up and leaving work for 6 weeks in a row. Would be great, but also the workplace would probably fall apart lol.

In Switzerland, on the other hand, we have turned down an additional two weeks of vacation with a majority of 67 % in 2012. Which leaves us with a meager 4 weeks.

I love paid time off. But the summer when tons other people are off and everything is busy/expensive/hot would be my very last choice.

I'm all about that off season.

Or, if you are a rail worker, more than one day off a month. Not, one day plus weekends, mind you, one day period.

OOO for all August? That's the French, not all Europeans.

The OOO full August sucks because every near touristic place is crowded and 2+ times more expensive.

I never pick August. But my company doesn't force me to pick August either.

I have, what most in the U.S. would consider, a very generous PTO allotment (accrues at 19.5 hrs per month) and I could not even fathom asking for an entire month off at a time. Who are these 34%?? Crap wait, I think I just realized. 🤦

Somehow I doubt those 66% of Americans will bother voting for the people and parties that would make this happen though.

Congress does it. If it’s good enough for the ruling class it should be good enough for the rest of us.

And the other 33% are either nativists or bootlickers

Yeah good luck with that. In the US capitalism is first and last, it's god, it determines everything. Votes vote against their own interests because capitalism. Way too many religious persons see Jesus more like a capitalistic investor than the socialist heretic he was. If the rich and greedy can no longer squeeze out the poor and vulnerable then america stops being America.

Never going to happen

If I can't have both, I'll take either this, or working 4 days (i.e. 32 hr) a week.