We’re failing to achieve work-life balance

I t’s August. I should be on vacation.

But I’m not. Are you?

By month’s end, I will have taken just two days of vacation. By year’s end, I’ll be lucky if I will have taken five days off.

I’m not alone. Americans are working more, taking less time off and getting paid less for their extra effort than at any time in modern working history.

Everyone knows the healing power of vacations. But two days doesn’t cut it. A recent study found that just a quarter of working Americans felt sufficiently refreshed when returning to work after a weekend off.

Having watched and talked to Europeans, who work the equivalent of 45 days less per year than the average American, I began to seriously envy their more than ample paid vacation time and shorter workweeks.

Universally (Dutch, Germans, Italians, Swedes, French), they told me they relished their work-life balance, regarding it as a quality of life standard rather than a work fringe benefit. It gives them more time to nurture their families and relationships, contribute to communities and church, and enrich their minds.

While Americans fall further and further behind trying to find more time for ourselves, some European leaders are advocating a return to the 40-hour workweek.

Business interests and Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy are pressing French President Jacques Chirac to repeal the country’s mandatory 35-hour workweek. In The Netherlands and Germany, where DaimlerChrysler and Simens got union agreements to return to a 40-hour week, debate rages on adding hours to the workweek.

Interesting anecdotes, said John de Graaf, national coordinator of Take Back Your Time, an organization advocating laws to achieve a more European work-life balance for American workers. “But it certainly doesn’t constitute a trend,” he said.

Actually, there is strong evidence that European countries are continuing to broaden the already popular policies for balancing the work-life of average workers, he said. For instance:

* In the Netherlands, people with growing children are encouraged to choose part-time jobs so they are able to spend more time with their families. Dutch workers who choose part-time work (usually three-quarters time) are paid at their same rate as full-time, receive pro-rated benefits and do not lose health care because it’s covered by the universal national system. Germany adopted a similar policy, although part-time wage rates are slightly lower than full-time.

* The Czech Republic adopted a childbirth leave policy that pays women 80 percent of their salary for up to 6 months, and continues to pay at declining rates for up to three years. Sweden has a similar policy. In all, 163 countries pay women during childbirth leave; 37 countries pay fathers paternity leave.

* In Belgium and urban parts of Sweden, workers can take a yearlong sabbatical from work. Those who take sabbaticals in Belgium receive unemployment compensation if their replacement is unemployed.

In The Netherlands, the workweek is 36 to 38 hours, depending on residency or occupation. Dutch workers generally put in 40- to 45-hour weeks, banking the extra hours so they can take a day off or two during the month, de Graaf said.

“Don’t expect to see longer workweeks or any shorter vacation time anytime soon” in Europe, de Graaf said, because the policies are too popular, even with white-collar professionals. A poll in France last September showed a 60 percent approval of the 35-hour week, with only 15 percent opposed outright. A French television reporter interviewing de Graaf said repeal of the 35-hour workweek in France “‘would cause rioting in the streets.’ “

Meanwhile, the move toward work-life policies in the United States is practically on life support. The California Legislature passed a six-month partially paid childbirth leave law. But the Maryland Legislature rushed to scuttle a recently unearthed law passed in the 1800s that allowed all workers to have Sunday off.

Yet, 96 of 168 countries surveyed by the Project for Global Working Families at Harvard University require that workers get at least one day off a week. The United States is not among them.

Other findings: 139 countries guarantee sick leave; 84 countries have laws that fix a maximum hourly limit on the workweek; 96 countries mandate paid annual vacations (most three to four weeks minimum) and 37 countries guarantee parents paid time off when children are sick. In all cases, the United States doesn’t.

In conclusion, the report said, “The United States lags dramatically behind all high-income countries, as well as many middle- and low-income countries when it comes to public policies designed to guarantee adequate working conditions for families.”

Write Eric Zoeckler at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206 or e-mail mrscribe@aol.com .