Give Us a Break

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De Graaf, an independent filmmaker with a long list of social-consciousness-raising documentaries under his belt, including the PBS documentary Affluenza, considers the need for mandatory vacation time a bipartisan issue, although he’s aware that Republicans are more likely to object to national legislation. Even some Democrats, he says, think he is overdramatizing the situation: Aren’t there more pressing social justice issues—say, poverty, health care, and ethnic/gender disparities—for us to worry about?       

“I’ve been told by a few prominent progressive activists that, while they’re personally supportive of what we’re trying to accomplish, they’re not willing to get involved because this is really a white, middle-class issue,” he says. “ ‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ is what I tell them.”

In July 2008, Take Back Your Time released its findings from a telephone sample of 1,002 U.S. adults. The poll revealed that more than two-thirds of Americans would support the passage of a paid vacation law. Most enthusiastic about vacation-time legislation were African Americans (89 percent), Hispanic Americans (82 percent), people earning low incomes (82 percent), women (75 percent, versus 63 percent for men), and families with children (74 percent).

De Graaf was not shocked that such strong support came from low-income communities and communities of color. (One hundred percent of African American respondents indicated that some vacation time is necessary to avoid burnout.)

“When you’re poor, you’re socially excluded,” de Graaf says. “When you’re working two or three jobs to make ends meet, you know how important it is to have [downtime] with your loved ones.”

But downtime is harder and harder to come by. According to the group’s poll, 52 percent of working Americans took less than a week of paid vacation in the previous year—28 percent took none at all—while 65 percent of workers took less than two paid weeks off.

The result? Too much hard work really does hurt and even kill people. Unlike the Japanese and the Chinese, we haven’t yet given death-by-overwork its own moniker (karoshi and guolaosi, respectively), much less enacted national legislation that allows surviving family members to sue over the workplace conditions that lead to overwork-related deaths (as Japan and Korea have).

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