American Adventurers Blaze Trail for Vacation Law

As more and more Americans struggle to catch their breath from longer workweeks and shrinking vacations, the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) stressed at the Adventure Travel World Summit in Seattle its endorsement of a minimum paid-leave proposal that would protect vacation time in the U.S.

The ATTA is the first travel organization to officially endorse the paid-leave initiative. The proposed legislation, sponsored by Work to Live, in Santa Monica, California, and the Seattle-based Take Back Your Time organization, which celebrated national Take Back Your Time Day on October 24, would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to grant three weeks of time off for anyone who has worked at a job for a year.

In Europe, citizens get four and five weeks by law; in Japan and Canada two weeks. Without statutory protection in the U.S., vacations are vanishing.

Only 14 percent of Americans take two weeks or more at a time for vacation anymore, reports the Families and Work Institute.

At a time of dwindling employee benefits, vacations are going the way of pensions and health care. One-third of American women don’t have any paid-leave anymore; one quarter of men, according to an AFL-CIO survey.

Without legal validation, vacations in the U.S. have the whiff of illegitimacy, which makes it harder for people to take a break.