Arthur's Blog: Robert Reich Advances Arguments for Legislation Guaranteeing Greater Vacation Time for Americans

The shortness of American vacation time is the main reason for the weakness of our travel industry and for the fact that our vacation opportunities are among the most limited -- and most expensive -- in the world.  If Americans as a whole were to enjoy as few as three weeks per year of paid leave, their travels would skyrocket and there would be need for thousands of additional hotels, resorts and flights, and thousands of additional travel agents and tour operators.  The cost of vacations per person would plummet.

And yet every study shows that the average American enjoys no more than a measly two weeks, on average, of vacation time -- and even those under fragile conditions.  You move from one job to another, lose the vacation privileges you earlier accumulated, and must painfully accrue new vacation time from your new employer.

The solution would be to amend the Wages and Hours Act to require that persons engaged in interstate commerce receive a minimum of three weeks' vacation per year.  And after that reform was adopted, we would then move on to consider a requirement of four weeks of paid vacation per year.  Already, persons in numerous other prosperous countries -- France, Scandinavia, Australia -- are guaranteed as many as five weeks a year of paid vacation.

Eventually, such legislation will be adopted in America.  And some of the strongest arguments for doing so were recently advanced by Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, noted economist, and currently Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

He points out, first, that workers who "take time off are more productive after their batteries are charged" -- they have higher morale and better attention to their work.  There is more output per worker -- enough to compensate employers for the higher costs involved.  Greater vacation time (requiring the hiring of replacement employees) also brings down unemployment, results in higher tax revenues. 

More and longer vacations improve the health of employees, as every study has shown. Longer vacations result in fewer sick days and lower health care costs.

In other words, according to Professor Reich, longer vacations aid not simply the employee but the nation as a whole.

I can imagine the anguished screams that will now be directed at his argument.  They are the same protests that met the adoption of maximum hours per work week, time-and-a-half for overtime, the granting of maternity leaves, the elimination of child labor, the requirement for safe work places, and countless other humane programs that we, as nation, have earlier enacted.  These measures -- and you can include Social Security, anti-discrimination laws, food stamps -- prompted anguished screams from the die-hards.  And yet as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, Americans will one day join the ranks of numerous other advanced, prosperous nations in guaranteeing humane amounts of vacation time for our citizens.