Off on Vacation.

• Position: Paid Vacation Act of 2009 - Essay

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This summer I'll be vacationing in Italy. One of my cousins there is getting married. I'll spend seventeen days in the hilly countryside of Campania, eating fresh mozzarella and prosciutto.

Two and a half weeks sounds like a long vacation. And it is by American standards. But two weeks is nothing compared to how my family lives in Italy, where a minimum twenty days of vacation is mandated by law and where it is customary to take six weeks off.

The fact is, Americans rarely 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 this could change. In late May, Representative Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, introduced the Paid Vacation Act of 2009.

The Paid Vacation Act would guarantee at least one week of paid vacation for employees at companies with at least 100 employees. Full- and part-time workers would be eligible after one year of service.

Three years after passage, the bill extends this requirement to companies with at least fifty employees, and requires two weeks for companies with 100 employees.

"Why are paid vacations good enough for the Chinese, French, Japanese, and German employees, but not good enough for us?" Grayson stated in a press release. "In other countries, it's a matter of right. Everyone is entitled to it. In our country, it is a matter of class."

It certainly is. Those in the lowest-paying jobs are less likely to have paid sick leave or paid vacation. According to Opinion Research Corporation, 31 percent of lower-wage workers do not get any paid vacation days.

"This is a very modest bill," says John de Graaf, executive director of Take Back Your Time, a nonprofit that studies the overworked American. "But we support it wholeheartedly and congratulate Congressman Grayson for introducing it and helping open a dialogue about why vacations matter, how deprived Americans are when it comes to paid time off, and why we must act now to improve the situation."

Paid vacation "is absolutely not an upper middle class issue," says de Graaf. "Some 37 percent of women who earn less than $40,000 get no paid vacation time. It's definitely the poorest folks who don't get the time. Our national polling shows the strongest support for paid vacation time coming from poor Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, young people, and women."

De Graaf sums it up: "This is an issue...