As Americans, we celebrate the fact that we are some of the hardest and most dedicated workers in the world. That’s surely something worth celebrating, but unfair compensation for the amount of work that the average American performs hinders the quality and pertinence of our Labor Day holiday.
Be it vacation time, paid maternity leave, or weekly time off, the U.S. trails most other advanced nations in time off policies. We are only one of few countries that doesn’t require time off each week, paid vacation, or maternity leave.
There seems to be some innate sense of rugged individualism that prevents many Americans from demanding better benefits.
If someone has the drive and desire to work 80 hours a week, so be it, but when we rush mothers back into work, it seems our priorities are misaligned. The U.S. is one of just three countries that does not require paid maternity leave. Topping the list for longest maternity leave is Bulgaria with 58 weeks, followed by the U.K. with 39.
Maternity leave is a crucial implementation because it allows parents to properly begin a child’s life and, once this is completed, the parents' transition back to work becomes much more seamless with paid leave. In fact, a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that mothers were more likely to experience depression and other similar mental health problems if they had a maternity leave shorter than eight weeks. This study goes on to assert that the optimal amount of time for a mother is 40 weeks.
Our labor laws should be more geared towards helping the worker than protecting the assets of businesses.
Past maternity leave, another pitfall of American workers’ compensation is exposed after examining the amount of vacation time U.S. workers are entitled to. Most American workers receive somewhere between 6 and 20 vacation days per year. That, too, falls way behind most other developed countries like Malta, France, Slovenia, Austria, Cyprus, and Luxembourg, which all set aside anywhere between 35 to 40 days per year.
Even worse, Americans have been forfeiting their vacation days at the highest rate in 40 years in fear of what they’ll return to once they’re back. John de Graaf, Executive Director of the nonprofit “Take Back Your Time” stated that, "I think a lot of people are fearful of the workload they'll come back to, and some know they'll be on call during their vacation anyway,” and, “the increasing inequality plays a major factor in the U.S. because people are feeling they have to work longer to keep pace.”
Without proper vacation time, many workers are found dreading their leave. This creates employees who, on average, are less content in the work environment and less efficient in comparison to countries who offer state-sponsored vacation minimums.
This Labor Day, let’s celebrate how far America’s labor situation has come, but let’s also address this irrational sense that demanding for more time off is for the lazy, and understand that greater benefits help both workers and businesses alike, a utilitarian measure.
