Mandatory paid vacation bill is reason for all to pause
It’s mid- to late-August and you know what that means: practically everyone (except you and me) is on vacation.
Here inside the Washington beltway, vacation policy has taken a back seat to healthcare reform, economic recovery plans, and impending climate change legislation for most of the summer. Vacation, however, has not been forgotten.
Case in point: Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) introduced the Paid Vacation Act to Congress in May 2009. Mr. Grayson’s bill would initially require one week of paid vacation per year at companies with at least 100 employees, and later expand to include smaller businesses as well. He explained, in a recent blog post, why mandatory paid vacation is necessary to American workers and to reduce our collective healthcare costs. He writes, “27 million workers in America never get a single day of paid vacation… [Yet] we spend more than $3,000 per employee per year on health care for stress-related conditions.” Amazing, isn’t it?
While paid vacation may make sense from a healthcare perspective, other economic impacts seem less favorable. Blogger and human resources expert Susan Heathfield argues that the Paid Vacation Act carries potential consequences for U.S. employers struggling to compete in a global economy. Her concerns include the higher cost of doing business in the United States versus overseas, which may slow hiring or contribute to the loss of more American jobs; an incentive for employers to change or reduce other benefits that may be critical to their employees; and less money to pay for compensation increases over time.
Both arguments are compelling, but miss a crucial point. In spite of our economic woes, the debate over mandatory paid vacation should center on time rather than money. Yes, I am familiar with the old adage that “time is money.” But, no, I don’t think it is universally applicable. Work-life balance, for example, is something that both employees and employers are supposed to value, but don’t in practice.
That’s right. The value of our time seems to be diminishing. Carissa Bluestone of Worldchanging hits the nail on the head in her post on travel and sustainability, in which she credits the “devaluation of vacation time” as partly to blame for our unsustainable travel and vacation habits. In other words, life moves so quickly and pulls us in so many directions nowadays that we often forget to enjoy—or sometimes even use—the vacation time allotted to us.
So what does this mean? To my mind, it means that paid vacation law is the start of a conversation on work-life balance, as opposed to the end of it. Indeed, companies will have to address economic implications if the paid vacation law passes.
But employees have reason to pause as well. We all must stop to consider implications and the spirit of Representative Grayson’s bill. Even those of us who receive paid time off already stand to be reminded how important it is to care for ourselves, to balance the personal and professional, and to enjoy (read: value) the time that we have.
Think about it.