Don’t let government tell us we have to take vacations

Sen. Bernie Sanders has sponsored a bill to mandate paid vacations for all employees. Like so many of his proposals, it sounds good until you get into the nitty-gritty.

Look, it’s true, as Bernie argues, that the United States is the only advanced economy that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time. It’s also true, reports CNN, that “not only do American workers get less vacation time than workers in other industrialized countries, but they also opt to take fewer days off.”

Consider: The average American worker gets about 18 paid vacation days a year and uses only 14 of them. Compare that to the French who average 37 paid vacation days a year and use nearly every one of them. Bernie’s solution, reports MSN.com, is to “guarantee at least one hour of paid vacation for every 25 hours worked and ensure full-time employees two weeks of paid vacation in addition to paid sick or family leave.”

Though I don’t like the government telling any of us what we must and must not do, it is true Americans need to get better at freely choosing to vacation. I’ve been self-employed for most of my career, and nobody has been worse at taking a break from their workload to recharge their batteries — but isn’t that a personal challenge I should work out on my own, without the government getting involved?

Back in 2014, I wrote about some interesting vacation insights shared by economist Stephen Bronars in a Forbes magazine article. He said that, for starters, 91% of full-time private sector employees already received paid vacations. Those who did not were typically low-tenure employees at small businesses — and new government mandates would hurt, rather than help, such employees.

Bronars said that U.S. labor law is flexible enough to allow employees to negotiate fringe benefits that benefit them and their employers. Perhaps some employees prefer higher pay and fewer vacation times, for instance. Maybe others prefer more flexible hours. Paid vacation mandates would eliminate such flexibility.

Plus, he continued, by forcing employers to give paid vacations to new or part-time workers, who may not currently be receiving them, labor costs will increase. Bronars said that our current flexibility “is an advantage, not a weakness, of our system and leads to more employment growth and greater job security than we would have if we adopted European-style labor market regulations.”

In other words, the freedom of an individual and his employer to work out the terms of employment by themselves generally benefits everyone. It incentivizes employees to demonstrate and improve their performance and value. And it incentivizes employers to reward employees with the fringe benefits they prefer — thus increasing employee morale and productivity.

Whatever the case, Americans need to get better at “vacating” more often. TheStreet reports more than half of Americans who are on vacation continue to work on their laptops while they are away, because they fear falling behind at work and losing their jobs.

Look, if we Americans don’t get better at freely choosing to vacation, it’s just a matter of time before politicians like Bernie succeed in getting our ever-expanding government to manage that aspect of our lives, too. Now turn off your digital devices and go for a long vacation walk.