U.S. Workers Shortchanged On Vacations Four Weeks Off, Or More, Is Standard In Most Other Industrialized Nations

You wait all year for your summer vacation. Finally, it arrives.

Two paltry weeks later, you’ve got another year to toil before your next summer vacation.

Does it seem too short? By global standards it is.

Americans get some of the least generous vacation benefits in the industrial world. The Brazilian worker gets the equivalent of four weeks off after a year of service. In Australia, the rule is 20 days of vacation for each and every Aussie.

In Europe, whole countries virtually shut down in August as workers and managers alike abandon suitcoat and tie for the beach, the mountains or the country.

So as trade and communications bring foreign cultures into closer contact, are American employers inching toward the liberal vacation schedule that rules the rest of the world? “Dream on on that one,” said Ken McDonnell, who analyzes vacation issues at the Employee Benefits Research Institute in Washington.

Longing for the European system will not change the American system, which lacks Europe’s mandatory vacation laws or its more epicurean approach to life, McDonnell said.

If anything, it may be that Europe will be forced more toward the American model.

“The problem is that Europe is now facing very high labor costs,” McDonnell said. “Unemployment is beginning to grow and become a very big problem over there.”

Vacation was once a simple matter. When smokestacks dominated the economy, vacations came whenever the factory owner decided to shut down for a couple of weeks.

Today in the United States, vacation is often used as a hidden handcuff by employers. By pegging vacations to seniority, employers discourage workers from leaving.

A survey of 1,035 employers by a Chicago-area benefits consultant last year found that employees got 20 days’ vacation after their first year only 1 percent of the time. After 10 years on the payroll, workers got 20 days off at 35 percent of the companies surveyed.

Eighty-two percent of U.S. employees get 10 days of paid vacation after a year of work, the survey said.

In contrast, many European employees get 20 vacation days as soon as they are hired, said Inga Harris, an international benefits specialist for Hewitt Associates of Lincolnshire, Ill.

In Europe, governments mandate vacation, but European practices go beyond that, Harris said. Often, employers tack an extra week or two onto the mandated four weeks.

“It’s not just that it’s a right, it is seen as a very good thing to do. There’s a different attitude toward work in general. I think the whole vacation area is very culturally determined,” Harris said.

For proof, just look at how vacation works at the Siemens Stromberg-Carlson plant in Boca Raton, Fla.

Siemens, which makes communications gear, is a subsidiary of a European multinational corporation headquartered in Munich. There is plenty of cross-cultural exchange.

When European engineers come to work in Boca Raton, they go on the American system. “They hate our vacation schedule,” said Benton Howie, director of human resources for Siemens Stromberg-Carlson.

Siemens has slightly less draconian vacation rules than the typical American company. Workers get two weeks of vacation until their third year on the job, three weeks until their 10th year of service. After that, they get four weeks.

If there is any chance for U.S. workers to gain longer vacations, it may come as U.S. companies go global and strive to understand how other cultures function.

“As more companies do become global, an awareness of other ways of doing business is creeping into our mind-set,” said Harris.

Julie Eiselt, a vice president for international trade services at Barnett Banks in Miami, worked for a year at a branch of a U.S. bank in London before taking her present job. After getting four weeks’ vacation in London, she scaled back to the three weeks initially offered at Barnett.

Last year, when Eiselt and her husband took a 2-1/2-week trip to Asia, co-workers were surprised that she was taking so much of her vacation at once.

“Everybody in England took at least two weeks together. They really feel you can’t relax and get away from work unless you are gone a full two weeks,” Eiselt said.

The seniority system for setting vacations may come under attack as lifetime employment at a single company fades from the scene. Workers are much more likely to switch employers than in the past, leaving the seniority system maladapted to the needs of employees.

But there’s little sign of that yet, said Mike Jurs, a spokesman for Hewitt Associates. “We do a survey every year to track vacations. We haven’t really seen it yet reflected in the data.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing