Do Americans Work Too Much?

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It’s important to note that with national legislation, no company will find itself at a disadvantage by establishing humane vacation policies. In Sweden, for instance, there’s no possibility of Volvo gaining a competitive advantage over Saab by offering less vacation. All employers must follow the same law. A standardized national system also eliminates the current penalties against people who change jobs, who can’t bring the vacation benefits accrued at their last company to the new one, where they usually have to start at ground zero again: one or two weeks. In an era when people are changing jobs as often as cars, this may be one of the best arguments of all for a national vacation policy.

I’d like to leave it to the free market to work all this out. But the market does what’s best for itself—as reflected on the next quarterly report—not what’s best, or even logical, for the long-term health of the human capital that is its foundation. If six-day weeks and no time off was considered abusive in the 19th century and laws were required to make things better, the situation is equally exploitive today and also requires legislative redress. Just as we need traffic signs at intersections, we also need them in the workplace, or we’ll keep getting run over.

Which brings us to what we must do: amend the Fair Labor Standards Act so that every American who has worked at a job for at least a year gets three weeks off, increasing to four weeks after three years. That’s our policy at Escape, and that’s what Work to Live is pressing for. We’re in the middle of a campaign to gather as many signatures as possible to present to Congress, proving there is an enthusiastic constituency for working to live, not just living to work. We want to create a national Internet meeting hall for supporters of the cause. We’re looking for progressive companies to join with us, as well as activists who can lend their talents to turning this tide of citizen support into public policy.

It’s going to take a massive grassroots effort over the long term to move the cause of more vacation time forward, but the outpouring of supportive e-mails and media coverage since we started our campaign tells me the time is ripe for a restructuring of work and life. The time crunch is affecting everyone, and people want out. They want their lives back.

One e-mail to the Escape Web site was from a 35-year-old man who’d had a heart attack his doctor blamed 100 percent on stress. It might not have happened, the doctor said, if he had had three weeks off. An e-mailer who works for Frito-Lay wondered how he’s ever going to make it to retirement working six-day weeks, seldom with two days off in a row. A woman at wit’s end told me on a radio call-in show in Lexington, Kentucky, that she’s worked at an agricultural company for seven years, six days a week, and gets only one week of vacation.

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