Vacation Deprived?

[xoxoxoBruce]

By DIANE E. LEWIS Boston Globe

Many American workers are vacation-deprived.
That is a key finding in a study released recently by Expedia.com, the online travel service. It maintains that U.S. workers will forgo millions of vacation hours this year, choosing to linger at the office rather than lounge on the beach or beside a pool.
The survey, the fourth annual vacation poll released by Expedia.com, was conducted by Harris Interactive, the national polling company. In all, 2,019 U.S. workers responded to questions about the amount of time they plan to take off in 2004.
Of those polled, 30% said they would not use the vacation time they've earned this year. That means they will return the paid time off to their employers. "On average," said the report, "every employed American misses out on three days of vacation, up 50% from the two days they each forfeited in 2003."
The survey results "also revealed that employees in the Northeast tend to secure more vacation time than their peers in other regions. On average, they receive 13.6 days of vacation time compared with 12.4 days for the rest of the country.
Northeast workers take more time off: 12.5 days on average vs. 11.6 days nationally. At the same time, such workers' are more likely to say that their employers are not as supportive about taking time off as they would like, 18% said they are discouraged from taking time off vs. 17% nationally.
When researchers looked at the Western part of the country, they found that 43% of the respondents there said too much work which means they plan to take less vacation. 27% said they tend to give up more than a week of their vacation each year. Additionally, 56% of the respondents said they routinely work more than 40 hours per week.
The survey results showed that working while on a vacation has become standard for many U.S. employees. In all, 32% of the respondents said they routinely check their voice mail or e-mail while away on vacation and they also do some work.
The exception: workers in the Midwest. Midwesterners are the least likely to forgo vacation, cancel or postpone vacation, or check voice mail or e-mail while they are away, the survey said.

Fat, lazy, capitalist running dogs, huh? Guess not.