Moving Susquehanna Valley Forward

Vacation: Americans Have to Get Away

by

You can’t deny it. Anytime the song “Vacation” by the Go Go’s comes on the radio, you sing along. Same thing with “Holiday Road” featured in the classic film National Lampoon’s Vacation. Vacation themes are well represented in American pop culture; unfortunately, they do not abound in the American lifestyle.

When it comes to vacation, Americans are left behind by the rest of the world–at the office, in the factory, behind the counter. Americans workers not only receive far less time off than their counterparts in other countries, but are also less likely to take advantage of the leisure time they do receive.

In every European country, workers enjoy at least four weeks of paid vacation. It is the law. Scandinavian countries and the United Kingdom require a minimum of 5 weeks of annual paid leave. This is in addition to paid sick leave, parental leave and holidays.

In America, there is no minimum requirement set by the government in terms of paid vacation (or paid sick or parental leave, for that matter). In fact, the United States is almost the only country that does not guarantee paid vacation time. Even China, Mexico and Nigeria mandate a minimum of paid vacation days.

Full-time American workers, on average, receive two weeks of paid vacation after a year of employment. However, more than half of those in the lowest wage bracket receive no paid vacation or holidays.

Americans that do receive vacation time are not fully taking advantage of the time off they do receive. According to Fortune Magazine, nearly 500 million paid vacation days go unused by American workers each year. In many cases, these days cannot be rolled over to the next year and are automatically forfeited.

Why are American workers not taking time off? Some may worry that they will be replaced or demoted if they take too many days off. Others dread the idea of coming back to a pile of work. These days, workers are unlikely to have someone filling in for them while they’re off. This means employees tend to work twice as hard before they leave and twice as hard when they return, which makes taking a vacation pretty stressful. In many cases, companies have downsized to reduce overhead costs, leaving fewer workers to do the same amount of work or more.

As a result, U.S. productivity continues to increase, but at what cost?

Americans work more hours than nearly every other industrialized country and, as a result, experience more work-related stress. Left unchecked, this stress can contribute to serious health problems.

Even the majority of U.S. employers recognize workplace stress as a concern as it can reduce productivity as well as increase employee absence and turnover.

Employees in Switzerland, Germany and Finland work far fewer hours yet are more productive. Swiss workers are considered inefficient if they cannot complete their work in 37.5 hours a week. And in many countries, employers are forbidden to contact workers after hours.

U.S. employers should not only provide ample time off, they should establish a work culture that encourages employees to take advantage of vacation time. Not only is it good for employees and their families, it is good for the overall health of the company. Workers who feel safe taking time off will be more productive.

America needs to follow the example of other countries and start prioritizing workers above work. People need time with their families and friends, time to enjoy beautiful natural places and time to do the things they love. Having dedicated time off results in healthier, happier, and more productive and creative workers.

Vacation is a right of all workers and yet here in the United States (and really only in the United Stated) it is not treated as such. This needs to change. The American labor movement has brought us a great deal of advancements in the work place: paid holidays (such as Labor Day, which we just celebrated), 8-hour work-days, 5-day work weeks, improved occupational safety and a minimum wage. The labor movement, and American workers, must demand mandated vacation time.

So crank up the Go-Gos and get to work…in making paid vacation a reality for all American workers.

By Nicole Faraguna, co-founder of the Susquehanna Valley Progressives

TURKEY: Authoritarian Democracy Meets Democratizing Coup

by

Last week’s (apparently failed) coup in Turkey highlights the failings of democracy there, and illustrates some pitfalls of democracy, here and elsewhere.

Ever since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk imposed secularization and the façade of democracy in the 1920s and 1930s, Turkey has had a prolonged struggle between a largely urban, educated, Western-oriented minority, centered in Istanbul, and a traditionalist, increasingly Islamist plurality, centered in the interior. Long after Ataturk’s death, the Western-oriented minority pushed Turkey’s modernizing turn, and the army intervened several times since 1960 to roll back electoral gains of the Islamists, in the name of the supposed secular essence of the Turkish republic. Turkey was a westernizing democracy led by a minority that was kept in power by the army.

But its democratic legitimacy depended on holding credible elections, which the Islamists kept winning. The current president, Erdogan, has been in power for over ten years and has increasingly resorted to heavy-handed repression against political opponents and the independent press. He is using his popular support as a mandate to concentrate ever more power in his own hands.

This is the context for the latest coup attempt. Because the army has always been a force for secularization, Erdogan’s accusation, that the coup was orchestrated by one of his Islamist rivals, is implausible. But Erdogan will nonetheless use it as justification to arrest any of his rival’s supporters he can catch.

Democracy as it has evolved in Europe and America, as it has been adapted elsewhere, balances two sometimes conflicting principles: popular sovereignty and limited power. Popular sovereignty means that no government is entitled to rule unless supported by an uncoerced popular vote. Limited power means that even with such a popular mandate, there are limits to what any government may do. Those limits may be embodied in constitutional provisions, or in the distribution of legitimate authority to institutions the government may not control, such as the courts. This model of popularly elected governments with limited authority is called liberal democracy.

In a liberal democracy the military may not take over the government in the name of saving democracy. The twentieth century Turkish model of democracy was thus fundamentally flawed. It was marked from its Kemalist birth with the goal of imposing democracy on the Turkish people, and transforming their culture over decades to make them fit for a proper democracy. We now witness its final failure.

But neither is the populist democratic model being developed by Erdogan a good fit for liberal democracy. Rather than accept limits on his authority, he is increasingly moving to concentrate power, to destroy or coopt any rival centers of power. The popular mandate justifies everything. This is Illiberal democracy: still democratic in the fundamental sense that the legitimacy of the
government derives from its popular electoral support (compare Saudi Arabia’s monarchy, or Iran’s theocracy), but without effective checks on the ruler.

Such populist democracy is not limited to Turkey. We see it in countries as varied as contemporary Venezuela or Russia or Zimbabwe. And, actually, leaders everywhere can be tempted to use popular support to justify suppressing opposition. Populist democracy allows the popularly-supported ruler to push through whatever radical reforms may be desired, without having to worry about checks and balances.

But populist democracy is fundamentally unstable precisely because of this absence of checks on authority and balance of power within the government. Unlike liberal democracy, populist democracy allows for no way to stop or remove the government, except insurrection.

That is why liberal democracies endure and populist democracies do not. But we must remember that liberal democracies are always subject to the populist temptation, precisely because their rulers are limited. When political leaders choose paralysis (or worse, obstructionism) over collaborative problem solving, it is easy to think that the system is broken and we should just dispense with limited powers, in favor of taking quick action. But we can see from the situation in Turkey and from the short lifespan of other populist democracies that this will not lead to long-term solutions.