[wordup] Bush's Texas-Sized Summer Vacation (And Your Rhode Island-Sized One)

[Adam Shand]

about damn time.  i'd almost move to germany just for a decent amount of
yearly vacation.  i'll happily work my ass off if i get to leave when i
need to and go on longish trips when i want to ... other wise i got crazy.

Via: rebecca <rebecca at wetadigital.com>
From: http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11327

Rebecca says ...

Interesting statistics about working in America.  I've included excerpts
in case you can't be bothered reading the whole thing:

"According to a recent International Labor Organization study, the U.S.
is beating out Japan with the highest average hours worked per annum --
just under 2,000 hours.  To make it a little plainer, that means
Americans are now working two weeks longer than the Japanese and two
whole months longer than the Germans.

...

But we are immensely productive, you might say, the economic behemoth of
the world, thanks to our little-rest, much-work way of life. Not so,
according to numerous economists and social scientists, who have found
that German productivity is on par with American productivity, even with
Germans' seemingly massive allotment of days off.

The results of overwork are well known: the demise of job loyalty and
absenteeism, usually stress-related, which according to Appelbaum's EPI
study has tripled in the past five years. Appelbaum also found a
phenomenon called "entitlement mentality" has flourished, in which
workers use sick time to take off the days they feel they deserve. As a
Wells Fargo employee put it to me recently, "No one asks any questions
anymore if you come back from a two-day sick leave with a slight tan."

Companies also seem to be bearing the brunt of overworking and
under-vacationing their employees. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at
Stanford's Graduate School of Business, has argued that without loyal
workers, companies are now in the expensive and time-consuming position
of training a constantly renewing pool of employees. As a
counterexample, he points to SAS Institute, the largest privately held
software company in the world, which has $1 billion annual sales and a
turnover rate of 4 percent, thanks to its European-style labor choices.

"SAS does not contract out very much of anything, use many part-timers
or tell people they need to think about their next job," said Pfeffer in
an interview. "What SAS does is provide generous benefits like on-site
day care, a full-indemnity health insurance plan [and] a 35-hour
business week. The organization's low turnover saves it an estimated $70
million." "