<Braces for the piling on by Europeans about how inferior our vacations are>
That's partially because us Europeans can't really understand how you can get by with little to no holidays. It'd be like an American talking to a Soviet person (back in the day) and being suprised that they were OK with no voting and secret police.
Believe it or not, your analogy would be much closer the other way around. People from the eastern bloc in general didn't work anywhere near as hard as even in the western Europe, let alone America (the running joke was "We pretend that we work and they pretend that they pay us.")
I remember reading an article by Jerzy Urban (a propaganda minister in the soviet-appointed government in Poland, famous for his vicious defense of socialism) in which he argued that while it's true that people in the western countries have a bit more political freedoms, for an average person that matters very little. An average person spends most of their time at work, where people in capitalist countries have vastly less freedom than in socialist countries (he actually mentioned that in western countries, getting drunk at work is a firing offense, whereas in the People's Republic of Poland it was pretty common practice; I'm not making this up.) Therefore, according to Jerzy Urban, people in the socialist countries in reality had at least as much if not more freedom overall.
Well I bitch about my vacation all the time (I get 2 weeks and 13 holidays, which really sucks for someone that likes to travel).
But on the flip side, the European vacation schedule can be destructive. I've worked with an Italian company that was trying to expand their market into the US., and the 6 week summer vacation literally sank any chance of their entrance. They invested millions of dollars, hired a bunch of people in the US (and didn't give the US employees similar vacation to their Italian ones), and were really rolling. In the spring they signed a couple million dollars in deals with distributors. Then July/August rolled around and the parent company went entirely on vacation. You couldn't even get the CEO. Phone calls went unanswered. Orders went unfilled. That literally sank their entrance to the market. A year later, they are effectively done and have lost all of their investment. No one will buy from them.
Imagine trying to compete with an American startup company but taking 6 weeks off completely. What happens during that time? I'm all for individual employees taking vacation to avoid burn out - honestly right now I could go for a week off - but shutting down the entire company for multiple weeks in a row puts you at a huge disadvantage. China, Japan, the US, and the BRICS aren't taking 6 week vacations. I don't care how efficient you are, if your company shuts down while your competitors keep rolling, it is unlikely that you will succeed in any competitive markets.
This sounds like an edge-case, and the solution seems rather simple: implement a policy so that only X% of employees in any department can be on vacation at any given time. Just like employees in retail have to coordinate their shifts (and have to find substitutes if they can't cover their shift), you can have this policy to ensure business continuity.
That helps, but doesn't completely solve the problem. This is actually done by many companies in Germany that I know of.
However, if you set the X% relatively high (e.g. 40%) then you still have the problem that the whole department might not function that well any more during this time.
If you set it very low on the other hand (e.g. 10%) then many people won't be able to take their vacation during the summer months and they will be pissed.
Sure, there's a way to find a middle ground that works out somehow, but still the original problem isn't completely solved.
Is it really the European vacation schedule specifically that's destructive, or is it the mismatch between that schedule and the schedule in "competitive markets"? Or that expectations weren't set or US operations weren't made independent enough?
If I want a European-style vacation, I just take unpaid time off; hell, if I take enough of it, I might even drive my salary down to nearly European levels.
There's also at-will employment in the USA (used by Zynga recently to screw employees out stock options), and lack of employee discrimination (AFAIK it's not illegal in US to fire someone for being gay or trans, while it is in EU).
These laws in EU are legal minimum, so they aren't going away. I, as an employee, don't have to worry about a new management team or buy out or poor annual return which results in the company cancelling all paid leave, because the companies in the EU cannot make that sacrifice.
I'm not sure what you are getting at, but it sounds like you are attempting to argue in favor of "your" system over another.
Enumerating relatively minor differences between democratic capitalist countries doesn't make your "Soviet Union" analogy any more appropriate.
However :
>> There's also at-will employment in the USA (used by Zynga recently to screw employees out stock options), and lack of employee discrimination (AFAIK it's not illegal in US to fire someone for being gay or trans, while it is in EU).
As seen in Spain, guaranteed / tenured employment is not all sunshine and roses. Even prior to the most recent economic troubles, younger employees were vastly over-represented among those with short term contracts. Likewise in France.
For reference, sexual identity and gender orientation are protected (or not) at the state level :
I wonder if you are exaggerating to make a point or you actually believe Americans take little to no vacation because the laws don't mandate it.
In finance you get 8 market holidays a year. The federal government has 10. On top of that, most white collar employees get 2 weeks of vacation their first year. After a year or two it's pretty standard to take 3-4.
That's partially because us Europeans can't really understand how you can get by with little to no holidays. It'd be like an American talking to a Soviet person (back in the day) and being suprised that they were OK with no voting and secret police.