U.S. Mandates Minimum Wage But That's All

If you needed any proof that the United States government favors corporations and businesses more than it does workers, all you have to do is look at the chart above. The United States government doesn't require employers to give their employees any paid vacation or paid holidays at all -- and it is the only developed nation that doesn't. If you got Thanksgiving off this year then you should consider yourself lucky, Because 25% of the workers in the United States do not get any paid holidays or vacations -- and your employer could stop giving them to you any time they wanted to do that.

The only thing the government does for workers is mandate a minimum wage (which doesn't have nearly the buying power that it did in the late 1960's) -- and many of our politicians (mainly Republicans) would like to abolish that. If you were an employer who wanted to abuse your workers economically, and couldn't outsource all of your jobs, then there is no better country you could be doing business in than the United States. You could pay your employees poverty wages, give them no benefits, and refuse to give them a paid vacation or paid holidays (and in many states and cities you wouldn't have to give them any paid sick leave either).

Here's how the Center for Economic Policy and Research puts it (regarding holidays and vacations):

European countries establish legal rights to at least 20 days of paid vacation per year, with legal requirement of 25 and even 30 or more days in some countries. Australia and New Zealand both require employers to grant at least 20 vacation days per year; Canada and Japan mandate at least 10 paid days off. The gap between paid time off in the United States and the rest of the world is even larger if we include legally mandated paid holidays, where the United States offers none, but most of the rest of the world’s rich countries offer between five and 13 paid holidays per year.

In the absence of government standards, almost one in four Americans have no paid vacation and no paid holidays. According to government survey data, the average worker in the private sector in the United States receives only about nine days of paid vacation and about six paid holidays per year: less than the minimum legal standard set in the rest of world’s rich economies excluding Japan (which guarantees only 10 paid vacation days and requires no paid holidays).