Vacation plans?
June 5, 2008 by Jean Mercedes
Filed under Business
Summer is just around the corner and if you work in the US and are planning a vacation, you should consider yourself lucky: unlike Europe where 25 or 30 days paid vacation are required by law, US employers are not obligated to grant paid vacation days or sick days and many do not.
David Moberg has written an excellent article published at “In These Times” about America’s vanishing free-time and offers some insight into why paid time off is a standard benefit in all industrialized countries except the US.
Any more questions about why I choose to live in Europe?
How many paid vacation days do you get?
Refer to my earlier posts for (1) a comparison of sick days in the US and Europe and (2) an explanation of how different benefits affect the cost of doing business in different countries (comparisons with burdened rates).
Image from usaghessen.eur.army.mil
The funny thing about vacation is that Americans don’t even take the vacation they have. I think there are two reasons for that: (1) they, unlike Germans, would rather have the cash and (2) they’re always slightly afraid of losing their jobs. In any event, American vacation is why I could probably never return to a normal job, even though I don’t really get that much time off in the end.