66% of Americans want European-style vacation policies, like being OOO for the entire month of August

Approximately 50% of voters will vote for a political party that views any such reform as communism.
- It's actually quite a bit less than 50%, but their votes have a bigger impact because of a broken system.
  
  sure, but effectively they deadlock the system and prevent any structural reform. Also, national polling currently has close to 50% of the voting population supporting a trump second term. We can't even get the Democratic Party to support universal public healthcare. The ideological delusion, the willingness of the people to support a system that makes their lives anxious and miserable, cuts across both political parties as well as the general population.
  
  We’re heading through a dry county, and for political reasons it’s a very long, narrow county. So I cannot serve alcohol until we’re through.
  -King of the Hill
  
  So much this. We have an antiquated and ridiculous system that gives the regressives far, far too much of a voice.
- Socialism is a very nice son of rationalism. It is time for a review

- That's because politicians are so far separated from the average American. Some of them are so old and senile and have been in power so long, they don't even realize how bad it is for the average American, and on top of that, because they don't think it's as bad as it is, they don't care.
  
  We don't have these things because 50% of the population is dumb as bricks and is voting against their own interest.
  
  It's the money in politics. Doesn't matter how young or old the politicians are.
  
  I have always wished that requiring congressmen work a minimum wage job in their district that they have to look for and apply to like the rest of us while out of session would do anything. Deal with some Karens to humble them properly.
  
  No. It's because the constitution effective abolishes democracy, by ensuring a two-party system.
  In the US democracy is limited to one coin toss worth of decision making once every four years. Add to that that their first-to-the-post system eliminates all election power to non-swing-states, that means ~40 of the states have no democratic input at all, and the rest has up to 15 bit worth of democratic input over their whole life time.
  Thus politicians have nothing to fear at all. They mess up, who cares? It's gonna be their turn after the next term limit anyway.
- The overwhelming majority of working class adults want these things, but also the overwhelming majority of working class adults also work for large corporations who do not want these things (because it costs them money/profits). Guess who has more money to buy off politicians? Walmart/Amazon/Target would work together to never let these beneficial policies go through congress. It would be worth it to them to spend literal billions to prevent it, because it would cost them billions in the long run.
  The sad reality is we don't really live in a democracy. It's an oligarchy that allows us to think we are in control.
  
  I have never understood why Americans doesn't have trade union?
  Like in Denmark we have trade unions where a working area is united like the health care area, have "FOA" there is trading "time off" payment and so on, for all in this area.?
- 98% of the people who vote are voting for repressive corporate culture.
  The people who don't vote can't afford to miss a day of work, and even if they did, they know the people they have to choose from won't do anything to change it.
  Therefore these polls are meaningless.
- That's because Americans have no say in these issues. They're brainwashed (well, 1/2 is) to think those things are sOciAliSm, which apparently is bad despite many voters having socialized medicine that they love. It's the American way, convincing people that what they want is not in their best interest.
  
  I would say th other half is brainwashed too, your 2 party system sucks. Things won't get better if you have no choice in elections
  
  Land of the free, amirite?
- The think tanks funded by rich people saying "They want to take away your guns/cows/statues etc" and "unions suck" are better at this than we are.
  We can want all we want, but a whole pile of the media is owned by the 1% and what they want is the status quo.
  Conservatism is literally, don't change anything.
  
  Conservatism is literally, don't change anything.
  Not true. They also like regression.
- The only way to vote for these issues is to vote to form a union.
- Racism and bigotry are a hell of a drug.
- Because the American Oligarchy do nothing to actually improve the lives of the average person and deflect, blame, and fear monger against the other party to distract from their own corruption. It's both sides of the political spectrum in this country and it's getting pretty old.
- everyone wants it when you survey people that want it
  (not that i disagree)

51% support slower employee response time outside of work hours
Uh, what? That does not compute. Either it's work, or it is not work (and I don't respond to anything, and don't get contacted in the first place)
- If you're a skilled salaried worker the law doesn't really consider you to have work hours. Furthermore, you aren't required to be compensated for time you are on-call unless you are required to physically be present.
  US labor laws are truly horrifying if you start asking yourself a few "what-ifs." The entire system is built on good faith.
  
  "Salaried worker" over here means just that you're being paid for fixed, regular working hours - typically something like 37.5 or 40 hours per week. Anything on top of that is overtime, which needs to be compensated either in time off, or paid out.
  On call rules also vary a lot by country, but typical it's something like being paid 20-25% of your regular hourly wage while on call, with overtime pay when you're taking a call.

Then don't vote for Republicans.
- 30ish percent of Americans identify as Republican (depending on the poll), so these types of questions are always ~66% of Americans in support
  
  But many independent voters who want these policies vote for Republicans. If they want these policies, voting for Republicans will not get them there.
- These things require 60 votes in the Senate and approval in the House. Republicans are blocking them in both.
  
  Nominally in power. In reality Congress is deadlocked and has been since his term started,and the USSC has aggressively blocked just about everything he has attempted via executive orders.
  We need a lot more center left democrats in office, at the state and federal level, to get any significant reforms passed. That also means getting the geriatric Clinton era neoliberal democrats out of office.

I've worked in companies with a presence in various European countries over my career. Whether or not everyone takes Summer leave at the same time very much depends on the company, and the country. I specifically remember working with a Finnish contractor firm who planned to have no billable time available at all in August, from anyone. But our offices in France and elsewhere never fully shut down in August, they were just very lightly staffed. Everyone took some multi-week summer holiday, just not the whole place at once.
It's not just summer leave, either. There are people all over the world having kids and going out on maternity (or even paternity!) leave for months at a time. When my wife and I had our kids in the US, I didn't get any extra paternity leave, and just used saved-up PTO. I particularly remember that my wife had to stay in the hospital for a bit after my first kid was born, so the two weeks I had saved up flew by in a flash. I recall my boss strongly encouraging me to dial in to a conference call on that last PTO day, and when I did his boss lashed into me for taking so much time off. I started sending out resumes shortly after.
On the other hand, when the Europeans I worked with later got their summer or parental leave, their Project Managers just dealt with it, and if it meant their schedules had to slip, they slipped, no temper tantrums required. And I think that is the key difference. American bosses and PMs are much more likely to get away with assigning blame for schedule slips downward, perhaps because not as many people are unionized.
- Many types of workers in scandinavia is not as heavily unionized either. Perhaps the ones that are not, enjoy a form of herd immunity from worker abuse from the ones that are.
  
  This is exactly why every worker should be supporting unions even if their industry doesn't have one. Rising tides and all that.
  
  There's a lot of unionisation. Further, there's industry-wide collective agreements, which pretty much do the herd immunity thing.
- Depending on the country, there aren't that many people in unions. Most countries in the EU (not Europe in general) have laws that protect the workers better than workers in the USA. The result is a different work culture.
  
  Which is often still the result of strong union actions in the past, even if only 20 or 30 % are currently unionised.
  Living in EU, mid thirties, full time office job getting about 33 days off per year all together. Max 4 weeks in a row tho, and must match schedules with colleagues so all keeps on running, no full closing of offices. The older you get, the more vacation days you get. Older colleagues complain they have too much holidays...
- Just an anecdote related to the first part of what you said: I'm in the US, PTO season seems to be December at my company. Both because some portion of people's PTO hours will expire at the end of the year, and obviously because of being adjacent to Christmas and new year.
- I'm on the UK and taking paternity leave in December. By using some of my holiday allowance plus a Christmas shutdown I'm turning my 4 week paternity leave into 8 weeks off in total. It's hardly a holiday (seeing as we'll be lookin after a newborn and my other half will be recovering from a c-section/childbirth) but god-damn I am looking forward to two months of just focusing on mu family.

- I am truly sorry that you are stuck in this awful situation. The system (or large parts of it) are designed like this. Keeps people in check. As an European, I find it baffling. Not everything is prefect here, far from it. I'm dealing with chronic health issues myself and I probably wouldn't survive the US.
  There is nothing I can do to help you, but I emphasize with your situation and hope, that you can rest soon!

34% of Americans responded "grind my body into the ground, capitalism daddy"
- I don't think they even responded, their mouth were probably full.

- Or were part of the base so trained as to kneejerk into thinking that sounds like "Communism".

I know lots of us people with "unlimited time off" type contracts. No one ever takes more than a week because they are afraid that their bosses wouldnt like it.
- I…do not know what’s being said here.
- My company has this and just about everyone I work with utilizes the unlimited time off. Most people land in the 5-6 weeks of vacation a year + sick + personal business + holidays.
  There are the few who make work their hobby too, but you can't do anything for those people IMO
  
  What is the difference to vacation and personal days?
- Research shows that people with unlimited time off take fewer days than people with set amount of time off.
  
  I am definitely an outlier here. We have unlimited PTO and 98% of our workforce is in the US so most people never take more than three or four days at a time. And often end up at the end of the year having taken less PTO than they would have as a regular hourly worker.
  But not me... I'll take 3 weeks at a time if I have plans. They can fire me if they want. I have a nice 3 months worth of severance written into my contract if they are the ones who terminate it.
  That would give me a month more of break and then 2 months to find a job.
  I know this isn't possible for everyone. But if more people stood up for themselves, even within the confines of these contracts, we would all be better off as management and executive get used to it over time.
- I've been told that generally, this is so the company doesn't have to pay you back for unused PTO if you leave the company.
  I can't vouch for this as true, but it makes sense.
  
  It can be to limit how much vacation time the company has to pay out on separation, or to limit how much "liability" for vacation pay they have on the books at any given time. If your employees get 5 days of vacation a year, use it or lose it, you don't have to deal with someone who (the horror!) has built up 2 weeks and wants to use it all at once.
  There are no state or federal laws that give employees a right to paid vacation time. Only 10 states require the company to pay out unused vacation time when you leave (CA, CO, IL, IN, LA, MA, ME, ND, NE, RI). In most of those states, use it or lose it policies are illegal. Everywhere else, the company policy basically decides if it gets paid out or not.
- I have unlimited PTO, and it's a total scam. I'm a contractor, and contracts have required hours within required time-frames. These time-frames don't have margin for taking off a couple weeks at a time. Any time you take off, has to be made up, so it's not really time off
- That is why time off is supposed to be mandatory
- If I'm stuck in the USA, I'm gonna find an unlimited time of job and actually use that benefit like Europeans. Fuck American work culture.
  
  I’m sure you’ll keep that job for several months. The other part of American “work culture” is how quickly and easily we can lose that job. Be happy that you have some worker protection
- If you get such a contract, make sure to read it closely. I had it once, phrased more like “there is no policy restricting time off”. It’s really up to your manager and it means there is an invisible limit that may be different for everyone, you won’t know about until you hit it.
  In my case, I had a good manager, but sure enough, got dinged after taking off two weeks in the year (the worst part was no actual vacation but individual days off for kid’s appointments). I much prefer an actual limit, because then you can take it
- Yeah because it’s a fucking scam who’s primary purpose is to eliminate pto liability from their accounting. It’s the equivalent of the 401k scam that eliminated corporate pension plans as a standard benefit.
- For some that's true.
  But we undergo a great deal of brainwashing. Unions are demonized, billionaires lionized, puritanical (insane) work ethic lauded, anything less than that vilified, etc.
  Attempts at unionization are aggressively subverted and crushed by large corpos.
  And most people are given just enough to not want to risk it all to get a bit more.
  It will be a while, yet, before US culture shifts enough that more people side with unions, join unions, and build critical mass. Although, younger generations seem to be more aware of the anti-labor BS more than my gen (x) was at a similar age.

Why do 34% of Americans not want paid time off work?
- Because they will think of someone else who "doesn't deserve it" getting it and mald.
  
  Mald?
- Something, something socialism is bad.
- Realistically, they are probably the small (and large) business owners that will have to pay for a month off work for their employees.
  
  "In 2020, there were a total 5,775,258 U.S. firms in all sectors. They employed about 129,363,644 workers and had total annual payroll of $7.3 trillion."
  https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/01/who-owns-americas-businesses.html
  US population per that census: 331,449,281.
  For simplification, let's assume one business owner per business. Then it's only 1.74243% of Americans that own a business. Even with inclusion of additional owners for businesses, you aren't going to get anywhere near that 34%, as that would be 112,692,756 people.
  In short, realistically the 34% are not business owners, and instead are the propagandized proletariat who fight against their own best interest in favor of capital (conservatives and fascists).
- some people are that bad of workalohics. never take time off and think others who do are weak
  
  the myth of a meritocracy strikes again
  
  I'm the kind of person that brings my work laptop on vacation and it's because I love what I do, not because I think people who don't do that are weak.

Who are the other 34%?? Who is like "yeah idk a consecutive 30 days off every summer actually, legitimately sounds BAD to me"?
- European here. Like me, many people from the poorer european countries don't have any place to go on vacations in august. Everything is expensive and there's always a rush to booking. For someone who doesn't have a "family summer house" and can't afford to rent a place in august, mandatory august vacations (like it's usual here) is just a waste of vacations. Too hot and no place cool to go. Also, august is typically the month where everything is flooded with small children. If you're not too fond of that either, then august is really the worst month to be on vacations. ALSO, it's lovely to work in august, because usually your workplace has AC and most of your colleagues are hundreds of kms away, trying to buy a melted ice-cream for 40min in a crowded beach.
  
  Couldn't you just stay home and fuck around and just not work?
- Uh, lots actually. People who self identify with work, and the shitty management class who are workaholics.
  Also, the self employed and small business owner who never gets vacation time.
  
  As a self employed small business owner, "What are weekends and work hours?"
  As an employee, "Couple weeks off sounds great!"
- Three possibilities. a) people who bought into the propaganda that being exploited by your employer means you're more dedicated. b) the temporarily embarrassed millionaire effect. They're willing to take the exploitation on the off chance they might be the one exploiting people in the future. c) they already are the ones exploiting people.
  
  There's also people that recognize that a "summers off" program like this wouldn't affect significant portions of the workforce. Retail and dining workers wouldn't get this time off. Medical workers wouldn't get this time off. Package handlers wouldn't get this time off.
  The divide between "work-from-home" and "essential" and those who got laid off completely during the pandemic opened a lot of eyes to how unfair different types of employment are. I can see plenty of workers saying they don't want white collar office jockeys taking yet another advantage that service workers will never have access to.
- "sounds like COMMUNISM to me for sure buddy !"

It's not too surprising that a country that had a civil war over 'employment laws' is a bad place to work.

They have dropped that "take a month off" thing like it's some crazy regular thing that happens.
I don't know about the rest of Europe, but in the UK you normally get 25 to 30 days of Annual Leave, companies often give extra days for long term or exceptional service, some have salary sacrifice options to buy more. Where I work you can even win some in charity raffles. The expectation is that you book them in advance with your boss when you want to use them.
If you want to save it all and take a month off then so long as the boss is okay with it, then off you go. But you won't have any leave days for the rest of the year.
- That's double the amount of time off I have here in the U.S.
  And I only get a week of paid sick days, which I've already used up due to an illness which hasn't even been properly diagnosed yet.
  I even have to make up time if I go to the doctor.
  
  In the UK the government mandates that your employer pay you whats called statutory sick pay for up to 28 week should the illness require it, which is a minimum of £109 a week.
  In addition, your continued employment by the company is protected and they cannot fire you for being sick.
  In reality the company will often support staff members for much longer if needed. That's just how things are expected to be. I've had a member of my team go on very long term sick with leukemia and he was supported by the company for over 4 years while he was in and out of hospital, letting him work part time and from home when he needed to, at his discretion.
  Expectations on companies here and the protections offered to worked in regards to thier employment and unfair dismissal situations puts the "land off the free" to shame
- Yep - it’s a tired misconception I first encountered working for an American 20 odd years ago.
  While it’s true that it’s difficult to get much out of France Spain and especially Italy in august - it’s because it’s holiday season - not because everyone is gone for a whole month
- Cool, I get zero sick days and get paid a lump sum "vacation" bonus every year equivalent to one week's salary.
  I get no real paid time off otherwise
  
  Strike
- 25 days off is 5 weeks (because days off would only be the work days.) That's over a month.
  Most positions in the US seem to give 10 days of annual leave a year. Some may also include sick pay as well.
  
  It’s even more than 5 weeks if you take days off adjacent to bank holidays. One can easily stretch it to 6+ in many countries.
- Do you get paid during your month off?
  
  Of course.
  
  In Finland you get paid 1.5x your normal monthly salary in the month you are in vacation. History of it is that to ensure you continue working after the vacation.
  Edit: it is not in the law, it is just something that unions have negotiated
- Yeah, I’m also from the UK and not sure where tf this “August off” thing is from, whether it’s something other European countries do.
  People usually take 1-2 weeks off at a time for a holiday then the odd day here and there, a month is ridiculous.
  I was gonna say that you’d burn out if you used up an entire month at once, but I guess Americans would be used to that kind of shit anyway.
  
  Here in Germany taking 3 consecutive weeks off is pretty normal, for me that's also the maximum that I can take off in a row without jumping through additional administrative hoops. A whole month isn't normal, but it could certainly be arranged
  
  Like so many things in the minds of Americans, when they think of social benefits in Europe, they think of Sweden.
  In Sweden it is actually not unusual to take 4 full weeks off every year in Summer. Especially if you have kids. Can be even 6 weeks for some years if you still got enough parental leave to take. And that is in addition to time off around Christmas, although then maybe not more than 1 1/2 weeks or so.
- Same in France.
- 25 to 30 days of annual leave is unheard of in the US. And it translates to 5-6 weeks, which is well over a month. It's common in a lot of European countries to take 4 of those weeks off in a single continuous summer break, usually August (some prefer July to avoid the August crowds). Yes, there's a misconception that everyone in Europe takes August off, it's ultimately up to each individual how they allocate their days off, but there are companies that do assume everyone will take August off and all but shut down during that month.
- I don't think its a Federal requirement to offer employees any vacation or sick leave in the US. For many office jobs you have to earn leave time over the course of months or years - it's not unheard of to have zero leave time the first six months of employment.
  
  Paid sick leave, no, but your job is protected by FMLA.
- If you want to save it all and take a month off then so long as the boss is okay with it
  Yeah, most bosses aren't ok with that.
  Where I am now I get two consecutive weeks max

- If you think voting will get you out of this, my american friend, you are wrong. You need a revolution.

I’m gonna assume the remaining 33% prefer to have a vacation other than summertime.

German here: I have yet to witness these "European-style" vacations mentioned in the post title.
Most workplaces seem to frown at people taking >2 consecutive weeks of vacation, esp. if they don't have kids and do it in main travel season / during school holidays. Handing in ~3 weeks of holidays often at least needs some kind of explanation to the team-lead, e.g. "I have school kids who have their summer holidays and we need to keep them busy until school starts again."
I have yet to see a single company going easy on someone saying "I'll be off all of August KTHXBYE".
- I work in IT for a major telecom provider in Scandinavia, and almost everyone takes 3 weeks summer vacation, mostly at the same time.
  Management recommends taking as much as possible over the summer, as we have a 5-6 week "slow period" when people's 3 weeks don't align.
  Other than that, it's common to just take the rest during other school holidays.
  We get 6 weeks by default and earn our way up to 7 weeks after 5 years.
- German here as well - this hasn't been an issue in any company I've worked so far, all didn't have an issue with 3+ weeks.
  
  I'm glad to hear it's not an issue in your experience / industry.
- My prior gig, all of our EU people took like 3-4 weeks off at a time. Probably industry-related?
  
  in some sectors, like construction, they just all have to take summer holiday together. That's usually like 2 consecutive weeks.
  Most sectors do not tho. Depending on the sector and the specific job, they just set an email autoreply: hi, i'm chilling by the pool rn, if it's urgent ask colleague x who is a bit informed about what i normally do and they should be able to help you, (we'll clean up the mess when i'm back)
  
  Could also be confusing to some as I remember a co-worker (American BTW) that he thought Sweden was part of the EU and that was the reason why the whole country would go on vacation on the month of July for the entirety of the month.
- Which gets into an entirely separate (though related) issue, where workers with children get benefits and accommodations that childless workers don't.
  Sometimes it's overt and blatant like in your case, others, it's more limited to interactions and relationships.
  A few jobs ago, I worked in a small office where the owner was good about approving PTO, but didn't want more than one person in any given dept out at the same time (ridiculous, but that's how he was).
  I planned a vacation of a long weekend one summer and got my PTO approved in like February for this long weekend in June.
  Literally 3 weeks before, this lady I worked with tells me that I "need to reschedule my PTO".
  After looking into it, I learn that what's really going on is that she wanted to take a week long vacation with her kids since they'd be off for the summer, and one of my days overlapped with the week she wanted to take.
  I refused, saying that my friends and I had already made arrangements.
  And then she blew it up, in the office in front of everyone, and told me how I was being so rude and mean and inconsiderate, that I could go and do things whenever I liked because I didn't have kids...and that I "just didn't get it" and could never possibly understand how hard her life was because I didn't have kids.
  I assumed that my boss and other coworkers would see how ridiculous she was, but while they mostly kept quiet, the ones who did speak up actually did think I was being unreasonable for not canceling my vacation to trade with her, seeing my plans as less than hers, just because she had kids.
  I learned to get comfortable with coworkers thinking I was an asshole, though, and enjoyed every moment of that getaway.
  
  Workers with children should get benefits childless workers don't. They need them.
  Rescheduling of PTO shouldn't happen tho. That was on your boss to catch and mitigate.
- I think it really depends on the place you're working. My company honestly encourages us to take all of our leave in one chunk, because it's easier to plan with. At least you should take one week at a time. I personally don't like it though. I like looking forward to having a few days off every month. Having a whole month off and then working troughout the year is not for me.
- I work in the automotive industry in the US, but we regularly interact with German suppliers (software and hardware). In my experience, in August especially it seems like half of their office is just out the entire month. I'm sure there's tons of industries where that isn't the case, though.
- Here in England there's a guy I work with who's taking six months off soon to go to Thailand. Thing is, we're working for the local authority and they're pretty good about holidays and sick pay because the wages aren't very competitive and they need to retain staff.
- Lol as an American I feel uncomfortable putting in more than 2 consecutive DAYS in a row and I'm salaried, not a service worker or anything. I can't even imagine having 2 weeks off. I've only been able to manage that once in my adult life during one of my transitions to a new company.
  
  I feel for you! Here in Sweden we are allowed by law to take 4 consecutive weeks during the summer (June, July, August) but we don't have to if we want to use it sometime else during the year, we usually start with 25 vacation days and need to use 20 of them before we get new days (happens in April for some reason I don't know) and we can save all days above 20, so when/if you get more days you can save more as well. (So if you have 30 days, you can save 10 every year but there is a limit on how long you can save them IIRC).

In Switzerland, on the other hand, we have turned down an additional two weeks of vacation with a majority of 67 % in 2012. Which leaves us with a meager 4 weeks.
- Pain

It’s sad. The real issue is an odd application of American capitalism and, believe it or not, unions. Yes, those same people that take credit for the 40 hour workweek and weekends prevented guaranteed vacation benefits.
Back in the New Deal when so many benefits were being codified, the unions began lobbying against going too far. The reason was their fear that if employers were forced by law to offer too good of benefits, then people would have no reason to join a union.
Of course, union membership has since collapsed, so we are now all stuck with the fallout and employers thinking 2-3 weeks of PTO is somehow enough. And never mind that as it turns out, European nations generally have higher union membership anyway.
Here is a source: https://www.npr.org/2023/08/17/1194467863/europe-vacation-holiday-paid-time-off
- The reason we have vacation time is unions. The thing about a minimum pay in law is not needed here as everything needs to be bargained for. Even if you yourself is not a union member , the bargains are for all employees. Memberships are higher here but on the down in many places , especially if you consider the time before today's regulations.
  And it shows in how weak the union are in some places. Everything gain is always under attack.
  The only way for you to get same benefits as we have is throug the union.
  
  Perhaps in Europe, unions pushed for mandatory vacation laws. But listen to my link. They pushed against it here. Not that I am discouraging unions. I’m just pointing out how greed effects everything in the US.

As an American, I want that sweet sweet Netherlands lifestyle so bad in the US.
- Nederlanders actually are able to talk to each other, come up with solutions to intractable problems, and plan beyond the next political cycle. They also have empty churches.
  
  It starts by having Proportional Vote which then feeds-into and feeds-off a culture of political consensus.
  This is unlike all those Potekin-Democracies out there - some worse than others - with electoral circle systems (worse, single representative ones with First Past The Post) mathematically rigged to create a duopoly of power which are associated with a "everything has two and only two sides" political and news culture and passing as "politics" and "ideology" something which is nothing more than a shouty circus of us-vs-them focused on the things that make the least difference, to distract from the absence of real choice for those things which do matter because they dictate lifetime outcomes and every day affect people's quality of life and how they are treated (tons of bullshit about identity but complete total consensus with total descriminationo on and maximizing the outcomes and dynastic nature of wealth).
  I've lived in a couple of countries in Europe with different voting systems and of those Nederland is well ahead the others, especially the ones with voting systems using purellly electoral circles (the UK - which has single choice FPTP electoral circles and an unellect monarch - was especially bad) - I firmly believe that real democratic choice is behind a lot of it (though culture too) and think the greatest problem in the West is a lack of democracy were most people trully are represented rather a theatre of "democracy" were all they can do is choose an "evil" (sold to them as the "lesser" one).
  
  Let’s revisit this after the next elections.
  Yes, we’re doing better than many other countries in many metrics, but we can all see the slide we’re on.
  
  True but then again they've been supporting the current government, which has been dismantling all the great support systems for so long, whilst being marred in scandals that always ended with the prime minister claiming "I can't remember doing that", that I'm honestly wondering what humanity can do to protect itself against stupid...
  
  Sounds like a waste of real estate
  
  This is such a crock of shit. If NL needed Federal approval from everyone between Portugal and Greece, your solutions would be pretty DOA too. It has nothing to do with some weird Dutch superiority complex.

It's mind boggling that there's no minimum PTO law in the US
- Not when you remember that capitalism is the state religion.
  
  Praise Cash, from whom all blessings flow.
- There's not a law because most professional jobs have PTO at level that would meet any mandatory minimum level.
  
  So it would affect nothing for those jobs and be beneficial to others to have those minimums
  
  What would you say the minimum would be?
  In Denmark it's 5 weeks, a lot (most?) get 1 week extra, some get more days every year they stay at the same employer, and a few get more (common in banking sector).

My cousins from Holland just came to Canada for a 6 week vacation. Can't imagine just up and leaving work for 6 weeks in a row. Would be great, but also the workplace would probably fall apart lol.
- Dutchie here; while this certainly happens, it's not the norm at all. Everyone working full time in the Netherlands gets a minimum of 20 paid days off per year. Many companies increase this to 25-ish days, with some outliers going up to 40+. At my company, taking >2 weeks has to be requested far in advance and planned around. If my prolonged leave would cause the workplace to fall apart, it wouldn't get approved.
  That said, yea it's definitely better here in Europe regarding vacations :)
  
  Of course, if one employee being away would cause a company to fall apart, us Dutch would conclude management is completely incompetent, and tell them that.
  A 3 week vacation is pretty normal, here. But we do plan those ahead. That means you might not be able to take it on the specific dates you have in mind. But not that you won't be able to take it!

I love paid time off. But the summer when tons other people are off and everything is busy/expensive/hot would be my very last choice.
I'm all about that off season.
- Same; I'm Scottish, so anything over about 35C will literally kill me. A week's diving in Malta during October, though? Lovely!
  
  I grew up in the US North, and now live in the US midAtlantic South, and I've given up going outside for most of the summer. Getting drenched with sweat in unseasonably cool weather because the humidity is 99% and mosquitoes that come out in full sunlight any time of day and grass with chiggers that want to make me shred off my skin almost the entire year 'round is enough to make me really wish I had the scratch to be a snow-bird.
- Agreed, I was on vacation earlier this month for a couple weeks since it was the only time that made sense with my work schedule. It was just brutally expensive to stay anywhere because things were booked up.
- We don't specify when you go on vacation in Europe it's just 5 weeks of paid time off
  
  Is there a story behind your username?

OOO for all August? That's the French, not all Europeans.
- I think 5-7 weeks vacation is normal in most of western European countries.
  
  No. 20-30 days per year doesn’t mean everybody takes those consecutively. The French are known to use all August, but other than that people like to spread them out over the year.
  
  No. No 7 weeks. And vacations over 3 weeks are for most of us problematic.

A lot of people seem to be confused by the "entire month of August off" thing, there is a bit of background to that, namely that factories shut down production in August for 2, sometimes 3 weeks. I'm not sure if this is a general thing, but all the factories that I worked with across Europe were doing this.
- Some of it comes from heavy industry, with the time of machinery that you just don’t turn off and on . The big steel makers for example, would only stop the furnace for the summer break (last week of July first week of august). And Christmas. Holiday was mandated at that time - known as the “factory weeks”
  
  A lot of it comes from August being fucking hot, which makes it hard to work. Not everyone is an office worker in an air conditioned environment.
- There are industries that do this in the US too, such as car manufacturing. However even then, the plant is shut down for a week or two, and you are required to take your vacation during this period. …. Except of course the people going in to do all the plant maintenance, who are prohibited from vacation during that period

The OOO full August sucks because every near touristic place is crowded and 2+ times more expensive.
I never pick August. But my company doesn't force me to pick August either.
- your vacation has been approved for August
- Why would they force you to pick August?
  Here vacation is most commonly from mid July to mid August, but some people obviously have it earlier or later out of choice or necessity.
  Manuy jobs can't be completely unmanned for 1+ months so vacations are often spread out slightly if possible.
  
  Many companies in Europe encourage you to take in August because the work is less in some regions and the majority take them during August.
  They can't pick all your annual days. But sometimes like 50% of them.
  I generally try to take mine during November or March.
  Sometimes December because I have to pick 3 days between Christmas and New Year as policy.

Congress does it. If it’s good enough for the ruling class it should be good enough for the rest of us.

I'm European and I have 1 month across all the year. I took 1 week during spring, 1 week in July, 1 week in August and I have another week for the rest of the year.
I couldn't say "hey, I won't show up during the whole month".
- You can split your vacation time into multiple parts, but one of them must be at least 14 calendar days. It may be hard to claim a whole month, but two weeks should be possible.
  
  You can split your vacation time into multiple parts, but one of them must be at least 14 calendar days.
  That would depend on your country, there is no EU law that makes having two consecutive weeks of holiday mandatory.
  
  It is! It was more convenient for me to have two different weeks during the summer. One of my co-workers is having 3 consecutive weeks this September (she's getting married).

Somehow I doubt those 66% of Americans will bother voting for the people and parties that would make this happen though.
- Well yeah. I deserve that vacation. Not those other people though. You know the ones I mean.
- Because neither party would? The red koolaide people would dismiss this idea immediately, because it's clearly scary communism. The blue koolaide people would pretend to support it while asking for your votes, then proceed to conveniently forget about it entirely, or pretend to try to do it while also receiving lobbying money from nearly every corporation and anti-workers-union type organization.
  The people that would support this are not part of either party.
  
  Thank you, you've rather made my point for me by erroneously assuming I was referring to either of those two parties
- I don't doubt it, but our passion for talking about the presidency has to turn into a passion for voting for local offices, too. The governor, representatives, and most key to this issue - unions. One must imagine the Libs unhappy.

I have, what most in the U.S. would consider, a very generous PTO allotment (accrues at 19.5 hrs per month) and I could not even fathom asking for an entire month off at a time. Who are these 34%?? Crap wait, I think I just realized. 🤦
- Lol, business literally won't fail if someone being gone. And anyway, you could literally phone in or do a teams meeting for that one super critical meeting if you took a month off.
  
  If the business does fail from employees being gone, the business has solvable problems in succession planning and organization.
- I have "unlimited" PTO, but that just means I have as much PTO as my manager thinks I deserve :/

Or, if you are a rail worker, more than one day off a month. Not, one day plus weekends, mind you, one day period.
- That's just criminal. They need to hire more. The railroads have also been removing rail from primary corridor despite increasing freight traffic. Super dumb. The Industry will implode.

Yeah good luck with that. In the US capitalism is first and last, it's god, it determines everything. Votes vote against their own interests because capitalism. Way too many religious persons see Jesus more like a capitalistic investor than the socialist heretic he was. If the rich and greedy can no longer squeeze out the poor and vulnerable then america stops being America.
Never going to happen
- It's harder to see positive change if you're not looking for it and even easier to hide behind the excuse that you don't see change so why even try. My state flipped blue and our governor is great. That didn't just spontaneously happen it happened because people kept trying. Apathy is just choosing not to help by another name.
  
  Oh I would agree but I guess I just got very cynical with age... I see so many severe problems that are caused by assholes, supported by large groups of Facebook armchair retards that will suffer from said problems the most... I've gotten to the point where I feel like humanity deserves to suffer because it calls it upon itself.over and over.
  Lets vote the devil himself for president because we believe in Christ! I mean... What? How?
  Climate change is a hoax! Said by so many famous people during the hottest day of the hottest month of the hottest hear in recorded history.... My teeth are grinding.
  Let's curb human rights because... Eh.. ah yesz to protect the children! Always claim to protect the children! Whenever you see a bill these days claiming to protect children I'll automatically assume it's to be able to rape children because that's how humanity rolls these days.
  Let's invade another country to play land grab and show off to the world how powerful I am!oh fuck, it's fucking up? Well let's continue a full fledge 3 day special operation into day 386something with tends of thousands of deaths because hey, we can't show weakness here now can we?
  I've seen too much shit, I've started to avoid the news because it's just too depressing.
- Sure it can happen. +60% is a lot of %.

And the other 33% are either nativists or bootlickers

If you're going for a whole month off, why August, the hottest, shittiest month of the year?
- So you can go somewhere that isn't hot and shitty or so you don't have to work while it's hot and shitty (air conditioning is still very rare in Europe).
  
  If you're an American, no, you probably can't afford to go somewhere nicer.
  
  I don't know where this concept of air conditioning being rare in Europe comes from.
- July and August are most common because they overlap with summer break from school, which means families can plan a trip together.
  
  Everyone crowding all the public places with their shrieking banshees at the same time just makes the idea even less appealing. I'd almost rather be at work than have to spend my vacation time around that.
- Going to the beach is nicer in a swimsuit than a heavy coat and mittens.
  I'd rather do pretty much anything in the heat of Summer than during any of the winter months.
  
  There are more than two seasons, and the others are both far more tolerable than summer or winter.
- I enjoy taking 4-6 weeks off when it is the hottest here in Europe, and going to the south of New Zealand for a nice holiday in cold temperatures. Flights are also surprisingly affordable when you plan it 6+ months in advance!
  
  Most Americans can't afford to vacation in another state, let alone another hemisphere.
  You know that stereotype you guys have about Americans being untravelled and ignorant of other cultures? Well, it's accurate, but it's not because we're arrogant or don't give a shit; it's because 2/3 of us live paycheck to paycheck. The thought of vacationing overseas is absurd and fantastical when you're too busy worrying about the fact that you can't save enough to retire or afford to get your car fixed when it breaks down and gets you fired for missing work because you used both of your sick days last month when you were violently ill, which, by the way, you didn't get treatment for because it costs too much and your insurance only partially covers it.
- October by far. Still warm enough to do stuff, cool enough that the heat doesn't make me want to kill myself, and the trees don't look barren and depressing like they do for most of spring and later in the fall.

- Well.. factorys and stuff usually close down entirely for 3 weeks.. but stores etc is still open.. in sweden we also have alot of young people who have 10+ weeks of holiday who works a few weeks in the summer to help out, get some cash and work experience.. ita highly regulated though.. no shift work, no dangerous work etc... So society still runs like normal.. but perhaps a bit slower...
- Am from Europe, I can confirm. The whole continent turns into a paleolithic society for the month of August.
  
  I've always wanted an ooga booga vacation.
- Well crucial services like public transport and water keep running. Some people also take off in July, or September if they don't have kids. But life definitely slows down in the summer. Lots of smaller businesses, especially restaurants will often just be closed for a few weeks. Large grocery chains stay open of course. It all depends on the amount of manpower to be able to spread out vacation periods.
- In Sweden atleast we usually get 25 vacation days and are entitled to 4 weeks in a row. So you can take a month off if your employer accepts it at the time you want it. Not everybody takes the same 4 weeks and not everyone takes 4 weeks in a row. I took 2 weeks last month and I'm saving 2 weeks for christmas.
  
  Same in Denmark
- In Estonia we get 28 vacation days every year, and companies are free to give out additional free days. For example I get three additional health days per year. It's compulsory to have one vacation that is at least 14 days long, and the rest can be used as you wish.
- In the Netherlands, people get 4 weeks mandatory paid leave (set by law), which is valid until july next year and usually 1 week 'optional' which is valid longer. (when working full time, 40h/week, when working 36 or 38h there will be more days leave) Schools close for 6 weeks during the summer, when it's hottest. (august) Also there is a 3 week period in each region for building companies to be closed. This period falls within the summer holiday of the schools.
  Most workers with children (and those working at building companies) take their leave during the summer, when it's usually quiet anyway. Those without the need to go on holiday during those periods, usually stay at work and catch up with the work that was left behind by those that are on holiday. (and enjoy their holiday when it's cheaper, outside the high season)
  Employers are required to allow personnel to take at least 3 weeks off, when requested, as personnel tend to get overworked when they can't wind down, which is not beneficial to the company as well costs the country money. (loads) On the other hand, personnel can be forced to take time off when they are overworked and have paid leave left. Mandatory leave usually expires after 18 months with no financial compensation (unless the company didn't allow leave, which is against the rules anyway), optional leave expires after 5 years and gets paid out.
  It takes planning, but apart from schools, the building industry and very small businesses, nothing closes. This is well, as nobody would want to be on leave all together, the black saturdays we have are terrible enough as they are. (started as a French phrase for the busiest saturdays on the road due to holiday traffic and spread across Europe)
- Yeah it's false, at least for The Netherlands (as that is my point of reference). Maybe you can have the whole month off if you save up your days but the majority of the working population does do some work in August.
- The thing is if you try and stay on work in August (Which is totally an option, the officers are not normally actually physically closed) you end up butting up against the fact that everyone else has left, and you can't talk to anyone. So unless your job can be done 100% by you with zero input from anybody else you can't get any work done.
  Other companies and other departments are closed, so you just end up not doing anything anyway, so you may as well be off.
  Besides is the one time of the year that you can guarantee all your friends / family will be available at the same time to go on holiday together.
- Hey, no you get to pick when you take that "month off" I get 26 days leave + bank holidays. I get to pick how to spend the 26 days. Bank holidays are mandatory. So I could take more than a month off in a row if I wanted to.
- Its not exatcly how it works( at least in poland ). You usualy get x amount of free days( 20 or 25 depending on how much you worked )that you can take plus free days for public reasons weddings,blood donation etc... Its just that its usualy june/july/August. Some companies opt out to just give all their employees days off on the same day since they cant really function if half of their worforce wants to go on vacation at the same time and those that need to function all the time do the nescessary magic to somehow maintain the nescessary pepole. In essence its not mandatory but rather customary and non tourist cities( or non tourist areas ) in Poland(europe) kinda die off for a month or two.
- Italy here. Usually factories and many offices shut down for at least 2 weeks in August. Essential services obviously stay open.
  Some other services may or may not decide to close, like a butcher may decide to close for a few weeks in the summer. Same for some bars/restaurants etc. Not all of them, some of them.
  Also there's a huge difference between where you are. If you live in the industrialized north, then what I described it's more or less true, but if you live in the south, it's all completely different. August becomes the busiest period for the tourist-centric south, with bars and restaurants working at maximum capacity, beaches and cities all full of tourists and service workers actually increase in this period.
  It's obviously not 100% all society shuts down, but if you are an American company trying to do business with Europe in August, just keep in mind that lots of stuff will be postponed to September.

Team leader from Germany here: This might oversell European holiday-regulations a fair bit here. Not one of the people in my team will get one whole month off in summer. How's that supposed to work? I can spare two people on holiday at any given time, So if all of my 13 workers want to have a week or two in July/August/September, none of them can have more than three weeks, and you'd have to be lucky for 3 weeks to align with the other's wishes. Otherwise, two weeks is realistic.
- 2 weeks is still exceptional. 2 weeks off at the same time happens in the US, but it’s rare.
  I’ve found most people in the US use PTO to have a 4-day weekend when a national holiday is also occurring.
  
  People here will use their holidays for such things as well (single working days that fall between a holiday and the weekend even have a name here: "Brückentag"/"Bridge day").
- Also team leader in Germany here. I'm currently on a three week vacation. Two members of my team take 4 consecutive weeks of vacation each. There are only 8 people in my team so impact of one person missing is even greater. There are weeks when only half the team is not on vacation. Our labour agreement doesn't even allow us to deny vacation requests. We just "simply" plan ahead and don't take on projects we can't handle during that time. So it highly depends on circumstances whether this is possible, it's definitely not generalizable.
- Well, in Sweden the employer is required by law to offer at least four weeks of continuous vacation during the summer break.
  So there are obviously differences within the Union is what I'm saying I guess.
- Cool, I get zero sick days and get paid a lump sum “vacation” bonus every year equivalent to one week’s salary.
  I get no real paid time off otherwise

Look you guys can have August. I'll work it. But I get December 15th to January 15th.
- I'm partial to May. More winter vacation just means rain and no sun. I'd rather travel when it's cool and sunny.
  
  Cool and Sunny... Dies of Indian heatstroke

If I can't have both, I'll take either this, or working 4 days (i.e. 32 hr) a week.
- I’m glad to be getting 15 days of PTO to spend when I’d like (with permission) starting next July. Currently I’m at 10 and it feels a little restrictive. I think 15 sounds decent, but 30 days worth of PTO to spend would be just lovely. I too would also take a 32 hour work week and stay at my 15 days off, tho. Easy money lol

I remember, few years back I had conversation about PTO with American. It blew his mind when I told him that I took two weeks PTO without any problem.

So nearly 34% of Americans don't support having workers get vacation time. Huh, wonder who those 34% are...
- Small business owners, managers, people worried that they will end up picking the slack from their coworkers, people with jobs that pay less but have large amounts of vacation time, the retired who don't benefit but definitely lose, and of course bootlickers.

The US company I work for offers unlimited vacation whch is a means for a company to avoid the financial liability of an entitlement to leave. That is illegal in Canada so for Candian employees we have unlimited vacation with a minimum of four weeks.
- In Europe, vacations are paid time off. That wouldn't work with unlimited days.
  
  "Unlimited PTO" is just a scheme for companies to not have to keep track of PTO owed to the employee (and not have to pay unused days out when they leave). It's generally a raw deal for the employee.
  In a company with traditional PTO, an employee could save up 4 weeks, and with adequate planning, take it all at once, even in the US. Their manager might grouse if it is near a key deadline, but if the employee has the time banked up it will generally get accepted. But in a company with unlimited PTO, the employee doesn't have that documented evidence that they have been saving PTO, and the manager has more leeway to reject the request if it is at an inconvenient time.

With the number of billionaires Wall Street is making, we can afford this

I actually got slightly told off last year because I hadn't taken enough holiday off. I got made to take paid leave.
- Considering that it's an EU law, if my company doesn't give me all the days off I'm entitled then they could get into legal trouble. I bet any company would want to avoid that.
  
  They can just pay you your time back that is allowable as long as you agree. But they didn't want to do that.
- I was in that boat this year. I ended up taking every Friday off this summer just to reduce my PTO time so I wouldn't lose it.

Damn, I only took half of August off like a sucker. In Germany we also have fixed school holidays which are in August in some states, and cannot move them. Most parents then take 2-3 weeks off in the summer, others hoard their leave and are forced to take it in a big chunk before the company gets in trouble.
- Yeah in the States we're well aware that if we're working with Europeans, we aren't going to be able to reach them in July/August. I like to hoard my vacation for the end of the year usually and take those two weeks off.

Afaik one month vacations are something out of the norm in Europe, but sure there's some countries that allow that, just don't come in with your good old fashioned American uninformed claims and expect it to be the norm. One week to two week vacations are more common afaik.
- Three weeks is easy too, especially over Christmas (I do 3 weeks every year and have done so in 5 different companies so far).
  I also had a colleague once who built up too much vacation days (we get pestered about using them by management), so he took a whole month off and went to Australia.
  The thing is: Every day you don't take goes over into the next year, but the company has to build reserves for this. Because if you leave the company they have to pay you out that vacation day (if you don't use it up before leaving). So if you have 300 employees and each one has 5 days over at the end of the year, that's around 12000 hours you have to be prepared to pay out.
  So HR and your manager usually pushes you to actually use up your vacation days each year (which is a good thing) :)

100% of Americans want a million dollars
- Tbh a good percentage of Americans would turn down a million dollars if it meant minorities didn't get it.
  
  In reality they would oppose it if minorities also qualified.
  
  Just take it and then siphon some off

I don’t think capitalism would ever allow less than 365 days of work a year in many companies. People at the top only see one thing, and it’s money incase it wasn’t obvious. So less production and less money at face value are not something they would entertain.
- The cool thing is that humans tend to be more productive when mentally well adjusted so if you're not doing a mindless 'cattle' job like callcenter support vacation days are in the interest of even the most heartless CEOs. If they're aware of it is another question.
- The Communists of the USSR didn't like vacation time, but accepted it as necessary for workers to reset and return to work refreshed.
  They believed that once their systems were perfected vacation would become unnecessary and workers could work all year without breaks.
  It's pretty terrifying that there are still people in leadership positions who haven't accepted these fundamental facts of work!
- I don’t think it is capitalism that is causing that. It is the idea of maximising shareholder value that the American economist Milton Freedman injected into the minds of political and corporate America.
  I live in a capitalist country with, in law codified, employee protections including a minimum of paid time off. In addition to that, a strong union that keeps companies in check.
  Capitalism works if the rules balance the power of the workers and the capitalist accordingly. But Freedman had other ideas and those are bad for everyone except a few rich guys.
  
  Have a look into how those laws came to be :-)
  
  The problematic thing is that the capital has the high ground in capitalism.. Therefore it always tries to get those pesky rules removed by just threatening politicians through taking away jobs and industry to other countries with lesser worker rights for example.

I came here hoping somecritter had asked what "OOO" is. Nocritter has, so I've decided that it must mean "Object-Oriented Overtime."
(Okay, I looked it up and it seems to be "out of office" but that's not as funny)
- Surely it means 'Objecively Outré Outerwear'? Everyone should have a chance to wear unusual clothing in August.
  
  Only occasionally obtuse?

We want it, but won't take the necessary steps to procure it.

Switch "companies should adopt" for "the federal government should mandate" and you might be a bit closer to what you need.
Expecting companies in the US to voluntarily make your life better is a hiding to nothing.