Vacations, Pensions and Pay
July 25, 2003
If statistics hold true, most of you are not reading this column while sitting next to a pool with a cool soft drink in your hand. In fact, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average American gets only 8.1 days per year for vacation. If you are lucky, after three years at the same job, that average goes up to 10.2 days (two weeks).
By contrast, the law in Australia and most European countries guarantees four weeks of vacation, with some companies voluntarily giving five or more. Even the Japanese and Chinese get two and three weeks, respectively, of legally mandated vacation.
According to Joe Robinson, author of Work to Live: The Guide to Getting a Life and founder of the Work to Live campaign, we are the only industrialized nation with no minimum paid-leave law.
According to Robinson in the Washington Post on July 27, “before the work ethic was hijacked by the overwork ethic, there was a consensus in this country that work was a means, not an end, to more important goals.”
Robinson wrote that in 1910. President William Howard Taft proposed a two- to three-month vacation for American workers. In 1932, Democratic and Republican platforms proposed shortening work hours, which averaged 49 a week in the 1920s.
A 1936 Department of Labor report found the lack of a national law on vacations “shameful.” Thirty other nations had a law. The department recommended legislation, Robinson stated, “but it never happened.”
Asian Pacific Americans have helped to increase the average number of weeks worked because many of us are small business owners, which could not survive if staff members took a month off. While I have not seen vacation data for only APAs, my impression is that many APAs don’t take enough time to unwind. Even that old staple, going back to one’s country of origin for a few weeks to see the family, has been happening with less frequency since the economic downturn and the fears of SARS.
Unfortunately, the long hours and shortened vacations come with a price: latch-key children, gang memberships, soured relationships and frayed family ties. Communities of people, and also the mind, body, and spirit of each individual, must be nourished and replenished on a regular basis.
If APAs and all Americans are working too much, at least we used to be able to pride ourselves on our relatively high levels of income and the retirement life toward which we were building.
Unfortunately, the Washington Post on July 29 reports that the Bush administration is backing a proposal to exempt more workers from overtime pay rules, while encouraging employers to give more comp time (time off at the discretion of the employer) instead of time-and-a-half pay for hours worked beyond 40 hours. Rewriting standards that have been written in stone since the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 first guaranteed a 40-hour work week, the new regulations will classify more workers as professional, executive or administrative employees whose career involvement means that they are willing to work as many hours as are needed with no extra pay. The Post reports that over 80,000 letters have been generated by these proposed rule changes already, with far more pro-labor than pro-business letters coming in.
For those who keep their retirement money in their mattress, the current economic downturn is not a problem. For the rest of us who are counting on pensions, however, the news is grim.
Backed by report from the General Accounting Office, Elaine Chao, U.S. secretary of labor and chair of the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) Board, warned on July 29 “that the financial integrity of the single-employer defined benefit pension guaranty system is, unfortunately, at risk.”
Chao said that the Bush administration would work with Congress to strengthen the defined benefit system by increasing the accurate and transparent disclosure of pension information to retirees.
The long-term viability of pensions was disconcerting to even Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, who stated recently that a financial meltdown similar to the savings-and-loan collapse of 1989 is possible.
The net result has been the default of some plans, and an estimated $350 billion shortfall in monies that will not be there when current workers retire.
Market experts warn retirees and the public to not yet panic about the pension problem, as government solutions may yet materialize. Given the trends toward lower wages, less vacation and greater pension insecurity, however, APAs and all Americans should take another look at Joe Robinson’s Work to Live campaign. No matter how much we have to live on or retire on, there is definitely more to life than simply “living to work.”
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