The Japanese have coined a word for what we are seeing in the American workplace -
''Karoshi" which means (Work to Death)''
American workers are now so afraid to take time off from work due to the recession, they are not taking time they are fully entitled to and need. No one can tell me that this isn't a sign of the continuing lack of real leadership in businesses and Washington.
People need time off - Studies prove that the best performing teams are those that get ample time off and have the ability to control their own schedules.....But we see that people are afraid that asking for time off will make them prime candidates for the next round of lay-offs.
This is NOT what we should be seeing in our country....it is time for a change as whatever has been going on for the last three and 1/2 years has only made this situation worse.
No time for vacation time?
Why the majority of workers can't -- or won't -- take time off, no matter
how secure their jobs are.
By Joseph P. Kahn
Boston Globe Staff / June 16, 2012
To be gone, or not to be. That is the question.
With peak vacation season looming, it’s certainly a question Meagan O’Hara
and millions more like her have been asking themselves. Do I take all the
time off coming to me? Can I really afford to, financially or otherwise? Or
will I be returning to so much backlogged work that it’s actually less
stressful to stay in the office rather than head for the beach?
This spring, O’Hara, 26, director of business development for a Boston
office-relocation management firm, took the first full-week vacation of her
working life — a Caribbean cruise — but not without some wariness. She’s
held other jobs before — marketing assistant, executive assistant — that
guaranteed her time off. Getting away for an entire week? That did not
happen, she says, because her bosses might decide they could get along fine
without her.
“I’d take a Monday or Friday off, but not full weeks or multiple days,”
O’Hara says. “I kind of felt I wasn’t allowed to, even though the vacation
days were well deserved.”
For younger workers like herself, adds O’Hara, leaving vacation on the
table shows a willingness to do more than what’s expected. Fortunately, her
current employer values taking time off. “If it’s not openly encouraged,
though, you don’t take it,” she says.
According to a recent study by Harris Interactive, an Internet-based market
research firm, 57 percent of Americans ended 2011 with unused vacation
time, failing to take, on average, 11 of their allotted days off — or 70
percent of what they’d rightfully earned. Other national surveys have
calculated that as many as 66 percent of us keep working when we could be
kicking back somewhere, leaving unused a total of 459 million vacation
days.
This mounting pile of bypassed perks has led to the United States being
dubbed “no vacation nation” by Europeans and others who take long,
leisurely vacations. Also creeping into the vernacular: “naycationers”
(those who take little or no time off), “breakations” (lasting only three
to four days), and, of course, “staycations” (time off taken close to home
— or even at home).
“Anecdotally at least, you hear vacation deprivation is getting worse,”
says John de Graaf, executive director of the Seattle-based organization
Take Back Your Time. He co-wrote a 2009 bill mandating paid vacations for
most American workers. (Submitted to Congress, it went nowhere.)
Given studies showing links between working too much — and too long without
time away — and increased risk for health problems like heart disease and
depression, says de Graaf, “It’s really very silly, particularly when
vacations could be one way to reduce health-care costs.“ Yet job security,
or lack thereof, skews our priorities, he maintains.
“Fear is the primary motivator,” de Graaf says. “When the economy’s weak,
they think, ‘I’d better show I’m 110 percent committed to my job.’ And with
companies downsizing and giving people more to do, the stress of coming
back to hundreds of e-mails overwhelms the stress of staying at work.”
“Naycationers” also worry about being tethered to work via cellphone and
e-mail while away, or paying for an expensive vacation — goodbye Vineyard
summer rental! — during tight financial times, de Graaf says.
Sarah Nasnic and her boyfriend could go to Cape Cod for a week this summer,
she says, “but what if the economy tanks tomorrow?” Nasnic, 25, who works
in marketing for a Boston architectural firm, has two weeks vacation coming
this year. She may not use them, though, partly to save money and partly to
continue team-building with her new boss.
Previously, Nasnic worked for a smaller company where job responsibilities
also kept her from taking sustained time off. The result was a happy
surprise: $2,000 in unused-vacation pay when she left the firm. “At this
point in my life and career, I’m not taking any long or lavish vacations,”
Nasnic says.
Howard Goldman has tried to get away from the office more as his kids move
through their teenage years. And yet he rarely stays away for long,
although it has nothing to do with impressing the boss. Goldman is chief
executive of Humboldt Storage and Moving in Canton, a company with nearly
100 employees.
“I’ve never taken my full vacation time,” he acknowledges. “One of the
biggest issues for me is coming back to the enormous amount of e-mails that
pile up, because the work doesn’t stop while you’re away.”
Only once in 20 years has Goldman taken 10 consecutive days off (his wife
lobbied for two weeks) to travel overseas for his daughter’s dance
competition. “It’s hard for me to take even a week off,” he says, “even
though I have a great management team to handle things when I am gone.”
Paradoxically, notes Boston University sociologist Juliet Schor, the
pressure to stay working is felt both in boom times and bad ones. When
business is going well, employers tend to increase individual workloads,
hoping to keep the enterprise running smoothly. During downturns, employees
worry their jobs will grow more difficult, or even disappear. Decisions
about taking time off often hinge on assessing individual risks and
rewards.
“In the higher ranks (of companies), not taking vacation time is more about
not getting the job done,” says Schor. “Whereas at the bottom of the
market, employees can often cash out on unused vacation time when they
leave. For them, it becomes a financial strategy.”
Is there a price to pay for squandering vacation, even if it means more
money in one’s pocket? “Yes,” says Schor. “Common sense says the ability to
step away from the work is very important.”
Harvard Business School professor Leslie Purlow’s new book is titled
“Sleeping With Your Smartphone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the
Way You Work,” based on her work with The Boston Consulting Group, the
well-known professional service firm. Purlow focuses on what she calls “the
great impossibility” of taking “pure, guilt-free time off” at a company
like BCG, whose clients expect 24/7 access.
Since she began her study of BCG, the firm has organized itself into
hundreds of smaller teams that systematically plan their time away from
work, a process initially christened PTO, short for “predictable time off.”
At first, that meant one night a week without checking e-mail, text, or
phone messages. But it has grown to encompass planned vacation time, too.
“Even though it sounds counterintuitive, the very act of planning makes
them rethink what they do, what their priorities are,” says Purlow. Among
the benefits, she adds, are improved employee retention, better work-life
balance, and increased productivity, adding value to what the firm does for
clients.
BCG project manager Jon Swan agrees that “refreshed brains tend to be more
productive ones,” as he puts it. But a company culture must encourage such
thinking. One friend of his who works in banking was told not to take his
family on a cruise, says Swan. Why? Because in a work emergency, he’d be
stuck at sea and unable to fly home. Instead, his friend took his family to
a destination located near a major airport.
Swan went a different route last fall. After months of planning, he took
his family on a four-day, midweek trip to Disney World, an ongoing work
project notwithstanding. “I’d built the right coverage model,” he says, and
having that flexibility “became an important part of the project.”
Winthrop town manager James McKenna has no such flexibility, he says, which
is why he won’t use three of his four weeks vacation time this year. Again.
With hundreds of town employees working under him, that’s a luxury he
cannot afford.
Municipal governments have seen a lot of budget cuts in the last decade,”
says McKenna. “As a manager, you’re not as free with your time. There’s
virtually no backstop, like there is in the private sector.
“Vacation seems more of a luxury now,” McKenna says. “I’d like to spend
more time with my family, but I’m not holding my breath.”
Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com
Bill Clinton isn't a genius, but he figured it out when the phrase " It's the economy, stupid!" became the catch phrase of his election to the White House.
It should be no surprise that the feckless fool in the White House doesn't have a clue when it comes to the economy. He spent his time in office trying to wreck the economy and catering to his idiot supporters.
The key quote in this piece is "Another former administration official called it an “ 'Oh, sh-t' moment.” "
That's rich as the American Public has been having an "Oh Sh-t" moment every day for the past three 1/2 years.
Time to go Mr. President.....really. You haven't got a clue and it's over.
Worst. President. Ever.
Jobs report upends 2012 race
By Amie Parnes - TheHill.com
A dismal May jobs report is being perceived as a possible game-changer in the presidential battle between President Obama and Mitt Romney, with Republicans saying the numbers provide further proof that the economy isn’t improving.
The report showing unemployment increasing to 8.2 percent and the creation of only 69,000 jobs shook some Democrats, crystallizing their fears that the economy could tip the election in Romney’s favor in November.
It also threatened to turn Obama’s argument that the economy is improving on its head and provided flashbacks to the spring economic slowdown of last year.
“It is a little scary,” said one former White House official. “There’s no sugarcoating this one.”
Another former administration official called it an “ 'Oh, sh-t' moment.”
“It’s not good,” the former official said. “I’ll say this, I’m glad it’s June and not October.”
The bleak report led to a terrible day on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones was down nearly 300 points in trading late Friday afternoon.
Romney seized on the report, calling it “devastating” in a CNBC interview and blasting Obama’s policies as ineffective.
“The president’s policies and his handling of the economy has been dealt a harsh indictment this morning,” Romney said in the interview. “Their policies have not worked; in many respects, their policies have made it harder for the economy to recover.
“And I think that’s why people are looking for a new direction,” Romney added. “The most significant thing we can do in the near term is get a new president.”
With their public remarks, Obama — along with White House officials and other top Democrats — sought to ease concerns that the economy isn’t rebounding fast enough.
In a speech in Minnesota on Friday, the president acknowledged that while the economy is “growing again … it’s not growing as fast as we want it to grow.”
“The economy still isn’t where it needs to be,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do until we are where we need to be."
But, speaking to a crowd at the Honeywell plant, Obama vowed, “We will come back stronger. We do have better days ahead.”
Reaction to the report on the left and the right highlighted the concern for Obama. The conservative Drudge Report’s lead headline, under a photo of Obama, was “Hell Day.”
In a rare occurrence, the left-leaning Huffington Post went with a similar headline on its website, coupling a picture of a frowning Obama with the headline “Jobs Report Disaster.”
Political observers argued the latest report just doesn’t jibe with Obama’s latest campaign slogan, “Forward.”
“I think it’s a real problem for the president,” said Susan MacManus, a professor of political science at the University of South Florida. “The argument was that we’re going forward, and all of a sudden it comes to a screeching halt.”
And MacManus said the timing, right before the thick of summer, couldn’t be worse for Obama. “This is kind of the last big thing people will pay attention to before they tune out during the summer doldrums,” she said. “You’d rather enter the summer on a high note than a reverse note.”
But one former White House aide said it’s a minor blip on what the White House and the campaign see as a broader picture.
“Look, we obviously wanted a bigger number, but it’s a continuum. It’s not a snapshot,” the former aide said. “But if we would’ve had today’s numbers in 2008, people would’ve been thrilled.
“Things have gotten better,” the former aide said. “That’s the bottom line.”
One prominent economist said the White House should take heart because Friday’s report didn't capture the true growth of the labor market.
"I really do think that underlying job growth is higher than this, and we're going to see that in the coming months," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.
Vicki Needham contributed.
The holiday weekend is over and all will be back to the normal routine. Kids grumpily head back to school, parents go back to the workplace or the daily routine of dealing with lack of work, child issues, paying the bills, housework, etc.
For me, that included getting off the bench ( unemployment ) and back to earning a paycheck. The one hitch is that it again involves a extended trip to the dusty side of the world. In this instance, it is a little different as I am working a non-DOD contract but working for another large government department in a program to hire local staff for a program providing jobs in their impoverished areas.
This presents certain challenges as we are not located in the large well guarded FOBs but in a smaller secure compound in a city. There is security and the local army units protecting us and we are safe. Even being on a large FOB is not 100% safe so there is risk no matter where you are over here. In life, there are no guarantees. I see everyday where people are there one minute and by accident, incident or unseen circumstances, they lose their lives. It can be as simple as heading home from the store in your car or stepping off the curb at the wrong moment.
While many would feel that being here increases the likelihood of something dangerous occurring, I have made the decision to accept this work as it is important that I assist in the effort to provide others freedom, especially economic freedom. Back home, many are still struggling to find stable work and I was one of those people. Jobs at senior levels back home are not as plentiful and the employers are very particular about experience as they have their choice of candidates. Too many good people are being passed over and that is not how good hiring practices should be done. Wages are lower and earning what you are worth is not easy. The work here is meaningful and ensures I am paid a good wage for my efforts.
At the same time as I travel to the other side of the world, things back home continue at their normal pace. The homefront goes on even while I am not there to participate in daily events. I am blessed with a strong lady who shoulders the duty of keeping all at home normal while I have to be away. It is a tough trade off for both as I miss out on being there, and she finds herself having to handle the watch on her own. We both know it won't always be this way, and in the end, this work will supply the extra income that many others would envy.
At the same time, life goes on at a slower pace for the parents who gave us life and life's lessons. My wife's Mom working to recover from her health issues (long term recovery) and my Dad who wound up in the hospital for some health issues that have become more serious. He will recover and that recovery will be likely slower than hoped for but he is a strong man even at his age in the mid 80s. Being unable to visit him at the hospital is another tough part of this gig. I have to rely on the word I get over the Skype chat.
I am miles away and world's apart from home, and not being able to be there for my family and my Dad is the toughest part of taking on this type of assignment. If I didn't, there would be larger issues of an economic nature that would be as perilous to our safety as being over here. Too many others have hit of tough times through no real fault of their own, and many have lost their homes and more.
Being here ensures the continued economic safety of my family but at a price. That price is "time" and it is a steep price to pay. I have made a Faustian bargain with the economic devil that pursues all these days. Those I know at home are facing severe challenges of stagnant wages, fear of job loss and an unsure future. I will gain the extra income I need to fix issues like an old house that needs some serious upgrading. In the end, the extra will not provide affluence but an ability to make repairs/improvements that have been long overdue.
Each of us finds ourselves challenged in life today and how we respond to those challenges is the real test of our metal. A while ago, I posted a write up about " Some must go and fight the Dragons"....This time I am still fighting the Dragons but with a sword of economic sharpness for myself and those here who we will help.
The fight is dangerous but so would not engaging in the fight.
I recall the words of Isiah 6:8 - “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I. Send me!'”
We'll carry on the fight and seek God's graces as each of us travels along our life's dangerous and perilous path.
