What Vacation Days? (a guaranteed victory for one candidate with courage)

[ProudDad]

"Americans now work more every year, on average, than workers in any other industrialized country (except for a virtual tie with New Zealand). With women working longer hours each year, the average annual work time for a married couple is growing steadily, and family time—including the crucial bonding experience of vacations—has suffered. Full-time workers in much of Europe typically take seven to eight weeks of vacation and holidays each year—that’s double the American average for full-time workers. Overall, the average private sector worker in the United States gets about nine paid vacation days and six paid holidays each year. Low-paid, part-time or small-business workers typically get far fewer, sometimes none. The same holds for paid sick leave: 72 percent of the highest-paid quarter of private sector workers get paid sick days compared to only 21 percent of workers in the lowest-paid quarter."

"People in the United States don’t even understand what could be possible on this issue ,” Schmitt says. “This is one of the most important ideological victories of the right in the last 30 years—to persuade us we aren’t rich enough to treat workers well. We’re incredibly rich, getting richer every year, and we have plenty of resources to pay adequate wages, pensions, health insurance and vacations, but we’ve chosen to give that money to the top five percent."

"Most Americans would be better off with more paid vacation and leave, but inequality, insecurity and the competitive rat race drives people to work even harder, often just to keep their heads above water. It’s very difficult for individuals to demand more time, even if the limited polling available suggests it would be popular. Major gains will only come from an organized movement and changed laws. One organization, Take Back Your Time, founded by writer and documentary filmmaker John de Graaf, is trying to persuade presidential candidates to support its proposal for mandating three weeks of paid vacation for all workers. “I think the political figure who would pick up on this issue would find great resonance,” De Graaf says, but so far nobody has."

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3233/what_vacation_days/

Do any of those clowns running for Prez (except Kucinich) get it?? Obviously not. They are either cowards, in the pay of the corporations and ultra-rich who are making out like bandits on the backs of us workers or both.