‘The amount of holiday that people get when they work for American companies, I think, is something of a disgrace. How are you going to find any real time with your children or your partner, real quality time if you have, really, no holiday time?’ That’s what British billionaire Richard Branson, speaking at a conference on Wednesday in Salt Lake City, had to say about how workers are typically treated by U.S. employers, according to Quartz.
The Virgin Group founder didn’t point to any specific statistics, but the well-known scarcity of paid leave in the U.S. relative to the rest of the world, particularly in Europe, can be seen plainly in this chart: According to Center for Economic and Policy Research data cited by Quartz, private-sector employees in the U.S. get an average of 16 paid days off per year, including public holidays — about half of what workers in many Europeans countries can expect. One in four Americans doesn’t get any paid time off at all.
“We encourage all our companies to give indefinite holiday time, paid,” Branson told the crowd at the Qualtrics X4 Experience Management Summit. “If somebody wants to go off for two months, they can. If there’s a wedding or a funeral, they don’t have to ask — they can take the day off. How awful to work for a company that doesn’t have massive loyalty from the people who work there.
Shawn Langlois Shawn Langlois is an editor and writer for MarketWatch in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter @slangwise.
As he Flys around the world
RichardBranson richardbranson needs to worry about his OWN back yard and quit telling America what IT needs. America will do what it does and people like RICHARD, can LIKE it. After all, it has been the USA that has SAVED his back year's ASS, MANY times. elitists liberals
Wise up Janet Weissssssss