Workers in Canada aren’t taking their vacations. A recent survey said that one-quarter of workers don’t take their full vacation time because they are afraid of having too much work to do when they get back.
Most think they will be better workers if they stay on top of the work.
But other studies have shown that when workers take breaks and vacation time they are less stressed out and happier on the job.
Managers should take this situation seriously, says Dianne Hunnam-Jones, the Canadian president of staffing firm Accountemps Inc. They should be urging their staff to take full vacation time, she says, because they will actually work harder when they come back.
Managers should also take their own vacations. When staff members see the boss at work all the time, they think they are expected to do the same.
In the U.S. it’s even harder to take time off. The United States is the only well-off country in the world without a law to make employers give their people paid vacation. And it shows. In an important 2010-2011 ranking of the most competitive economies, the U.S. came in fourth. Sweden, which offers its workers five weeks of paid vacation, ranked second.
Canadians are usually offered two to three weeks of vacation when they start a job.
Some other countries, for example, Germany, Australia and Japan, make employers offer their workers at least four weeks of paid vacation.
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
By Jonathan Tilly
Writing/Discussion Prompt
As a student, you enjoy several vacations throughout the year. Why are vacations important to you?
How do they help you?
Reading Prompt: Responding to and Evaluating Texts
Primary
Express personal opinions about ideas presented in texts (OME, Reading: 1.8).
Junior
Make judgements and draw conclusions about the ideas and information in texts and cite stated or implied evidence from the text to support their views (OME, Reading: 1.8).
Intermediate
Evaluate the effectiveness of both simple and complex texts based on evidence from the texts (OME, Reading: 1.8).
Language Feature: Proper Nouns (Places)
A proper noun is a specific person, place, or thing. For that reason, the word “school” isn’t capitalized, but “Ashley Park School” is.
Today’s article contains several proper nouns that are capitalized because they tell of a specific place.
Circle all of these words.
