Proud to be an American?
By Miguel Diaz 23 Dec 2003
Well, it’s that time of year again. The halls around my office are quiet…almost too quiet. Me and about four or five other recent hires are holding down the fort while the ancient ones spend the last of their five week vacation allotments to get away during the holidays.
<p>Not that there’s anyplace I’m particularly drawn to visit this time of year, but I’d definitely like to have some time to chill. While <a href="http://www.ibm.com"><span class="caps">IBM</span></a> executives finally got their heads out of their asses and decided to give us 0-5 year employees three weeks vacation starting next year I still can’t help but feel like I’m getting jobbed.</p>
<p>The really sad thing is that I should be feeling lucky about this. The United States is the only industrialized country that does not mandate (by law) a minimum amount of paid vacation per year so the corporations could really screw us if they wanted to. By contrast the <a href="http://europa.eu.int/">European Union</a> mandates at least 4 weeks paid vacation to all employees, with several countries increasing that minimum to 6 weeks.</p>
<p>Granted, my interest in this is purely out of self-preservation (I’ll save my altruism for my animal rights rants), but I’d be hard pressed not to vote for someone who ran with a minimum paid leave law on their <a href="http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8622">platform</a> (unless it was Bush). While looking into this I found lots of <a href="http://www.cepr.net/give_me_a_break.htm">information and comparison charts</a> that really make you want to take a few extra sick days next year.</p>