in love with leisure

Polls reveal that Americans are 20% happier on the weekends. And for good reason: We are overworked.

Americans are working so much, in fact, that we barely take vacation. Last year, half of all Americans took less than one week off for vacation. We’re the only industrialized country without laws guaranteeing paid vacation time.

But in these times of economic uncertainty, how can we justify taking a vacation?

I put this question to John de Graaf, director of Take Back Your Time and co-author of Affluenza: the All Consuming Epidemic. He was my guest today on WORT’s noon call in program, “A Public Affair.” (Click here to hear the show.) Take Back Your Time, de Graaf’s nonprofit, studies the overworked American.

“These are the times in which this type of break is even more important because people are really stressed,” says de Graaf. “It’s clear that vacations—breaks from the workplace—are key de-stressors and we have a lot of evidence for that.”

For starters, time off is essential for one’s health.

Evidence shows that people who don’t take regular vacations are sicker. If you are male, you are 30% more likely to suffer a heart attack and 21% more likely to die by any cause at an early age if you don’t take vacation. If you are female, the odds are worse. Women who don’t take vacations are about 50% more likely to suffer from heart disease than those who do.

“When we look at depression, the statistics are pretty alarming,” says de Graaf. “The Marshfield Clinic, based in Wisconsin, did a study of 1500 women over time and found that women who regularly do not take vacations are one-half to one-third more likely to suffer from depression as women who do regularly take vacations. And if women haven’t had a vacation in five or six years, they’re some eight times as likely to be depressed as those who regularly take vacations.”


The current economic crisis offers the chance to start a conversation about the wreckage created by thirty years of market fundamentalism, deregulation, and tax cuts for the rich. “What I see bubbling up today is a lot of openness to new ideas and to the sense that it’s not working and we have to go in a different direction,” says de Graaf. “I think we have to organize to do that. We have to talk to our friends and neighbors.”

And we’re going to have to push Obama, too. He met with Obama three years ago as part of a group of people to talk about work/life balance. He came away with the impression that Obama really understands the issue.

“His wife especially is very concerned about the work/life balance issue. But Obama is facing huge pushback from the other side,” says de Graaf.

“We have to support our President where he’s doing the right thing and be critical when he’s not,” adds de Graaf. “And I think the bailout and financial payoffs to Wall Street is one place where he’s not.”

It’s easy to think that paid time off is just a white-collar issue. But it’s quite the opposite, as those in the lowest paying jobs are less likely to have paid sick leave or paid vacation.

“Some 31% of low income workers don’t receive any paid vacation time. 37% of women who earn less than $40,000 get no paid vacation time. So it’s definitely the poorest folks who don’t get the time,” says de Graaf. “Our national polling shows the strongest support for paid vacation time coming from poor Americans, African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, young people, and women. These are the groups who really believe we need vacation law in the United States.”

Take Back Your Time is organizing a national Vacation Matters summit this summer in Seattle. “Times of economic crisis like the one we face today are also opportunities to envision the kind of economy and life we really want and to ask what really matters when it comes to quality of life,” says the Right2Vacation website.

Take Back Your Time and the Right to Vacation campaign were discussed in the U.S. House of Representatives in late March. Alan Grayson, Democratic Representative from Orlando, Florida, cited the group and it’s proposed Minimum Leave Protection Family Bonding and Personal Well Being Act, which would mandate three weeks of vacation every year. De Graaf will be meeting with Grayson’s staff in the next few weeks to move forward.

Paid vacation “is absolutely not an upper middle class issue,” says de Graaf. “This is an issue of social justice.”