66% of Americans want European-style vacation policies, like being OOO for the entire month of August

Approximately 50% of voters will vote for a political party that views any such reform as communism.

It's funny, all these articles about how Americans want universal health care, vacations, four-day work weeks, maternity leave.

Yet nothing ever changes. Even a little bit.

51% support slower employee response time outside of work hours

Uh, what? That does not compute. Either it's work, or it is not work (and I don't respond to anything, and don't get contacted in the first place)

Then don't vote for Republicans.

I've worked in companies with a presence in various European countries over my career. Whether or not everyone takes Summer leave at the same time very much depends on the company, and the country. I specifically remember working with a Finnish contractor firm who planned to have no billable time available at all in August, from anyone. But our offices in France and elsewhere never fully shut down in August, they were just very lightly staffed. Everyone took some multi-week summer holiday, just not the whole place at once.

It's not just summer leave, either. There are people all over the world having kids and going out on maternity (or even paternity!) leave for months at a time. When my wife and I had our kids in the US, I didn't get any extra paternity leave, and just used saved-up PTO. I particularly remember that my wife had to stay in the hospital for a bit after my first kid was born, so the two weeks I had saved up flew by in a flash. I recall my boss strongly encouraging me to dial in to a conference call on that last PTO day, and when I did his boss lashed into me for taking so much time off. I started sending out resumes shortly after.

On the other hand, when the Europeans I worked with later got their summer or parental leave, their Project Managers just dealt with it, and if it meant their schedules had to slip, they slipped, no temper tantrums required. And I think that is the key difference. American bosses and PMs are much more likely to get away with assigning blame for schedule slips downward, perhaps because not as many people are unionized.

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34% of Americans responded "grind my body into the ground, capitalism daddy"

The other 34% of adults surveyed were middle management.

I know lots of us people with "unlimited time off" type contracts. No one ever takes more than a week because they are afraid that their bosses wouldnt like it.

Who are the other 34%?? Who is like "yeah idk a consecutive 30 days off every summer actually, legitimately sounds BAD to me"?

Why do 34% of Americans not want paid time off work?

It's not too surprising that a country that had a civil war over 'employment laws' is a bad place to work.

They have dropped that "take a month off" thing like it's some crazy regular thing that happens.

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but in the UK you normally get 25 to 30 days of Annual Leave, companies often give extra days for long term or exceptional service, some have salary sacrifice options to buy more. Where I work you can even win some in charity raffles. The expectation is that you book them in advance with your boss when you want to use them.

If you want to save it all and take a month off then so long as the boss is okay with it, then off you go. But you won't have any leave days for the rest of the year.

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I’m gonna assume the remaining 33% prefer to have a vacation other than summertime.

German here: I have yet to witness these "European-style" vacations mentioned in the post title.

Most workplaces seem to frown at people taking >2 consecutive weeks of vacation, esp. if they don't have kids and do it in main travel season / during school holidays. Handing in ~3 weeks of holidays often at least needs some kind of explanation to the team-lead, e.g. "I have school kids who have their summer holidays and we need to keep them busy until school starts again."

I have yet to see a single company going easy on someone saying "I'll be off all of August KTHXBYE".

It’s sad. The real issue is an odd application of American capitalism and, believe it or not, unions. Yes, those same people that take credit for the 40 hour workweek and weekends prevented guaranteed vacation benefits.

Back in the New Deal when so many benefits were being codified, the unions began lobbying against going too far. The reason was their fear that if employers were forced by law to offer too good of benefits, then people would have no reason to join a union.

Of course, union membership has since collapsed, so we are now all stuck with the fallout and employers thinking 2-3 weeks of PTO is somehow enough. And never mind that as it turns out, European nations generally have higher union membership anyway.

Here is a source: https://www.npr.org/2023/08/17/1194467863/europe-vacation-holiday-paid-time-off

In Switzerland, on the other hand, we have turned down an additional two weeks of vacation with a majority of 67 % in 2012. Which leaves us with a meager 4 weeks.

As an American, I want that sweet sweet Netherlands lifestyle so bad in the US.

It's mind boggling that there's no minimum PTO law in the US

My cousins from Holland just came to Canada for a 6 week vacation. Can't imagine just up and leaving work for 6 weeks in a row. Would be great, but also the workplace would probably fall apart lol.

I love paid time off. But the summer when tons other people are off and everything is busy/expensive/hot would be my very last choice.

I'm all about that off season.

OOO for all August? That's the French, not all Europeans.

A lot of people seem to be confused by the "entire month of August off" thing, there is a bit of background to that, namely that factories shut down production in August for 2, sometimes 3 weeks. I'm not sure if this is a general thing, but all the factories that I worked with across Europe were doing this.

The OOO full August sucks because every near touristic place is crowded and 2+ times more expensive.

I never pick August. But my company doesn't force me to pick August either.

Congress does it. If it’s good enough for the ruling class it should be good enough for the rest of us.

Somehow I doubt those 66% of Americans will bother voting for the people and parties that would make this happen though.

I'm European and I have 1 month across all the year. I took 1 week during spring, 1 week in July, 1 week in August and I have another week for the rest of the year.

I couldn't say "hey, I won't show up during the whole month".

Or, if you are a rail worker, more than one day off a month. Not, one day plus weekends, mind you, one day period.

And the other 33% are either nativists or bootlickers

Yeah good luck with that. In the US capitalism is first and last, it's god, it determines everything. Votes vote against their own interests because capitalism. Way too many religious persons see Jesus more like a capitalistic investor than the socialist heretic he was. If the rich and greedy can no longer squeeze out the poor and vulnerable then america stops being America.

Never going to happen

If you're going for a whole month off, why August, the hottest, shittiest month of the year?

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Team leader from Germany here: This might oversell European holiday-regulations a fair bit here. Not one of the people in my team will get one whole month off in summer. How's that supposed to work? I can spare two people on holiday at any given time, So if all of my 13 workers want to have a week or two in July/August/September, none of them can have more than three weeks, and you'd have to be lucky for 3 weeks to align with the other's wishes. Otherwise, two weeks is realistic.

Look you guys can have August. I'll work it. But I get December 15th to January 15th.

If I can't have both, I'll take either this, or working 4 days (i.e. 32 hr) a week.

I remember, few years back I had conversation about PTO with American. It blew his mind when I told him that I took two weeks PTO without any problem.

With the number of billionaires Wall Street is making, we can afford this

The US company I work for offers unlimited vacation whch is a means for a company to avoid the financial liability of an entitlement to leave. That is illegal in Canada so for Candian employees we have unlimited vacation with a minimum of four weeks.

So nearly 34% of Americans don't support having workers get vacation time. Huh, wonder who those 34% are...

Damn, I only took half of August off like a sucker. In Germany we also have fixed school holidays which are in August in some states, and cannot move them. Most parents then take 2-3 weeks off in the summer, others hoard their leave and are forced to take it in a big chunk before the company gets in trouble.

I actually got slightly told off last year because I hadn't taken enough holiday off. I got made to take paid leave.

Afaik one month vacations are something out of the norm in Europe, but sure there's some countries that allow that, just don't come in with your good old fashioned American uninformed claims and expect it to be the norm. One week to two week vacations are more common afaik.

I don’t think capitalism would ever allow less than 365 days of work a year in many companies. People at the top only see one thing, and it’s money incase it wasn’t obvious. So less production and less money at face value are not something they would entertain.

We want it, but won't take the necessary steps to procure it.

100% of Americans want a million dollars

I came here hoping somecritter had asked what "OOO" is. Nocritter has, so I've decided that it must mean "Object-Oriented Overtime."

(Okay, I looked it up and it seems to be "out of office" but that's not as funny)

Switch "companies should adopt" for "the federal government should mandate" and you might be a bit closer to what you need.

Expecting companies in the US to voluntarily make your life better is a hiding to nothing.

I used to live and work in Washington DC and that place shuts down in August, as all the politicians vacay at that time.

Can I get the month of 2024-2027 off?

"OOO"?

Had no idea American's couldn't do that 😲 No wonder they don't travel!

Other than the part where I would rather not take my vacation in August when every one else is too.

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True

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