In a web article from CNN entitled "The No-Vacation Nation," it was pointed out that American workers have less time off with more strings attached when they do than any other industrial nation on earth. There is no law in the U.S., as opposed to other countries, that mandates a set number of days or weeks for leisure by people who work for a living. The article goes on to say "That makes the U.S. the only advanced nation in the world that doesn't guarantee its workers annual leave," according to a report titled by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal policy group.
This might be a good time to examine this lack of free time in the light of the conservative mantra of individual freedom. Is this vaunted freedom basically the freedom from the burden of being able to take four weeks off to be with one's family or the freedom to choose which cell phone you have to take with you when one is on vacation so that continual contact can be kept with the office? The standing gag in American work places is that a vacation just means you can work from somewhere else.
So, are four or six week mandadted vacations a socialist plot? Well, no. Of course, if you think Germany, France and Switzerland are socialist, you may have a point. A better explanation is that Americans have been so thoroughly brainwashed by the Lords of the Marketplace that they actually like to have less time off. 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. Why?
People who have been taken prisoners often develop the Swedish Syndrome, a phenomenon where the hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors. Is it possible that we've got the same kind of thing cooking right here at home? Why else could we see the hostility expressed for the company or the boss mixed with the voluntary overtime and weekend work that sometimes results in divorce and parentless kids? Promotion? Ambition? The mystique that the harder you work, the faster you'll advance? Ask the people who busted their butts for years only to find themselves laid off becaise of a corporate merger or an unexplained "downsizing."
The unwelcome truth is that America has become a nation driven by an all-consuming love of money. Nothing, or very little, of honesty, ethics or morals can survive the Darwinian drive for survival, not of the fittest, but the most ruthless. "Dog eat dog" isn't just an accidental turn of phrase. "It's a jungle out there" isn't a joke.
American corporate culture has castrated its labor unions (and is still in the process). It has elevated corporate greed to a religion. It continues to bribe and otherwise pressure governments, both federal and state, to tighten the noose around workers' rights as opposed to increased profits for multinational business. We're now seeing outright attacks on any attempts to organize workers by circulating horror stories about some few (but egregious) abuses of power while ignoring the equally appalling horror stories about corporate tax dodges, arbitrary firings, power grabs and outright purchases of elected officials.
Yes, we're a no-vacation nation. And we'll continue to be as long as we keep acting like sheep in the Valley of the Wolves.
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