Our American Work (to Death) Ethic

What are your vacation plans this year? Do you have vacation plans? Do you even get any paid vacation? Sadly, many Americans don't. And the ones who do are lucky to get a few weeks at best. We are the unchallenged losers when it comes to the understanding that time away from work is important and healthy -- socially, physically and psychologically. The above chart speaks for itself. This article is a pretty comprehensive summation as well.

To cite a few examples from my own circle: A close relative got three weeks vacation from the privately held company where he worked, but he would always get a sideways look from the owner and the attitude that he was practically stealing from the company when he had the audacity to take it. My wife recently joined a company in a well-paying, middle management position. She's been in the workforce longer than I, but was only given two weeks. Despite her position, salary, expertise and years of paying her dues, she got the company rhetoric, "New hires get two weeks. No negotiation." I get three weeks off, but that's because I've been here over five years. I don't get another week until I've got ten years under my belt. Another is a friend who is considered highly skilled labor, but starting fresh at most machine shops she usually gets nothing for the first six months. Or it's necessary for her to accrue her one or two weeks before she can take it.

Granted, the above examples don't take into account all forms of PTO -- sick days, personal days, paid holidays -- but that's assuming that's even part of the package. Some companies don't have policies in place for sick days. That means, depending of the changeable mood of your supervisor, you could be suspect for calling out with a cold.

Also, the chart only accounts for federally mandated vacation time. I've only lived in a few states, but so far none of them had mandated any minimum vacation time for the common man. I'm not familiar with whether or not there are more liberal, forward-thinking States that do.

What this tells me is that the governments of most every other industrialized nation are comprised of people who respect their workforce and understand the necessity to protect them from the inevitable exploitation of big business which -- evidently -- will jump at the chance to live down to its lowest impulses.

So what's wrong with us? Are we not getting the message through to our representatives? Or do they simply not care because they've got their six figure incomes and six weeks of vacation and we should just keep quiet, not rock the boat and be happy that we have a job?

It's one of my mantras that I'll work to live, but I won't live to work. I count myself as one of the fortunate. In addition to my fifteen vacation days, I have ten sick and four personal -- twenty nine days in total. By sobering comparison, a first year intern at nearly any company in Europe would have as much and then some his first day on the job. In fact, most companies over there will voluntarily far exceed the federal mandates.

It shouldn't be a surprise among us that there are so many instances of stress, depression and heart attacks as we are ground into dusty submission by the daily grind. With no end in sight and no light at the end of the tunnel for a majority of workers, it's clear where much of the drain on the healthcare and social service systems comes from.

Our American work ethic is ethically un-American. For citizens in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we are slaves to the bottom line and to the corporations that have us in their grips, and we've become fearful for our jobs, that we are replaceable and therefore obligated to our selves, our families and to our communities that we become not a burden.

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all...."