Tuesday, May 31, 2011

America: The "No Vacation" Nation?

Expedia reports that out of 18 vacation days, the average American worker only used 14 last year.


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About 25% of American workers don't even get any paid vacation time, and the rest of us are lucky if we get two weeks (actually, that's only ten work days) of time off from the job. The mentality is to work us to death. That's the capitalist system of exploitation. American workers are always kept in fear because of lack of job security, as well, so even when they do have vacation time, they're often reluctant to take it, or are cautious about how much they take at one time (when my dad was working, it took him ten years to earn 4 weeks of vacation a year, and then he would take it all at once, which he said the managers didn't like, but those were the days when more private sector jobs were unionized, so he at least had a union to offer some protection from arbitrary employer actions).

We live under a system designed to keep the working class in constant fear of losing their jobs, with just enough unemployment to keep the peons in line with the knowledge they can be easily replaced with another job-hungry wage-slave waiting in the wings, but not so much unemployment to threaten the system itself with riots in the streets and the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with a just system of true worker control and ownership of the workplace.

I recently took two days off from work, and when, a couple of weeks later, I needed just a schedule change giving me a Monday off for that week only, our manager threw my recent vacation days back in my face (he considers himself a "liberal" Democrat, by the way) saying "You just took a week of vacation." A week? I took two days! With my weekend days that equaled a total of 4 days off in a row! But in his capitalist, pro-boss, anti-worker, hierarchical mindset, I was now asking for too much, because, Good God!, I'd had a couple of days off.

The Yankee money-grubbing big business "work-ethic" is another thing we have to thank Lincoln and his war of aggression for, because it imposed this system on the entire country.

But some will defend it all like the filthy shills for capitalism that they are:

“Sure, there are those who complain, and some for good reason, but it seems that this country, being dubbed the no-vacation nation, is more of a testament to employers and employees alike, rather than a black eye for capitalism and the American way of life.”

It's a testament to the injustice of wage-slavery, idiot! That's all it is!

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