The Deprived Americans

Most Americans are openly proud of the fact that they work fewer hours and earn more money than workers any where else in the world. Yet until recently they have trailed the labor forces of many industrialed nations in one surprising respect: vacations. Until the late 1940s, the typical male U.S. employee enjoyed no more than a six-day holiday annually. Since then, his time off has been increased to about three weeks (v. two weeks for women, who tend to change jobs more frequently and thus accumulate less seniority). But some European workers have had paid vacations of a month or longer for the past 30 years.

Even today, many U.S. workers lag behind their European counterparts in vacation time. In West Germany, for ex ample, blue-collar workers get 31 weeks off, white-collar workers a month; some government employees are entitled to as much as six weeks of holiday time. The prime force in lengthening West German vacations has been the unions, which have given vacations equal priority with wages, pensions and fringe benefits.

Most Americans must work nearly seven years for the same employer be fore they can claim as much as three weeks' vacation. All French workers, from office boys to factory foremen, are given four weeks' vacation starting with their first year on the job. Many Frenchmen take holidays of up to seven weeks. Rather than try to stagger vacations and cut down production, most French plants let their employees off in August and close for the month. In Sweden, workers are still better off; every employee in the country is guaranteed a month's vacation by law. In Norway the farmers have set up a fund which should pay them for a four-week holiday by 1975. Australia per mits at least three-week vacations for all, and the unions have applied to an arbitration commission for an additional vacation week, with hopes of winning it.

In vacations, as in other things, Japanese workers depart from the Western norm. They are granted up to three weeks' holiday, but they rarely take the time due them, even though most cor porations do not pay cash for unused vacation days. One reason: Japanese workers apparently have a strong need to be needed. If they find that their plant or office can get along without them, they feel their place in the system is diminished. Lately, some major firms like Toyota and Sony have been shutting down their plants for as long as one week during the summer to force their employees to take the time off.

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