Don’t Go to Work Unless it’s Fun Day is celebrated every year on April 3. Though the origins of the holiday are largely unknown, the idea is to stay away from work if it won’t be fun. But if work is going to be fun, don’t miss it for anything! In the U.S., there is no legislation mandating paid annual leave for employees. However, the Family Medical Leave Act (F.M.L.A.) was passed in 1993, granting employees unpaid leave to recover from serious illnesses, care for a new child, or care for immediate family members who are sick.
Although the origins of Don’t Go to Work Unless it’s Fun Day are unknown, the idea is to stay away from work if it won’t be fun. In the U.S., the average company provides employees with about 10 to 20 days of leave per year. Interestingly, all the way back in 1910, President William Howard Taft tried to revolutionize the system. He suggested that every American employee needed around two to three months of vacation annually “in order to continue his work next year with the energy and effectiveness which it ought to have.” However, Congress never enacted the law. In other European countries like Sweden and Germany, legislations were passed requiring employers to provide employees with a mandatory seven weeks of paid vacation per year.
In 1993, the Family Medical Leave Act (F.M.L.A.) was passed in the U.S., guaranteeing workers a minimum of 12 weeks of unpaid leave to recover from serious illnesses, care for a new child, or care for immediate family members who are sick. In 2009, Congress attempted to pass “The Paid Vacation Act,” which required that employers provide a minimum of one week of paid annual leave to employees. Unfortunately, this attempt proved unsuccessful. Ever since, the only major shift in the culture of paid leave began in 2013, with a few states mandating a minimum number of paid sick days every year. These states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.
According to a report released in 2011, 57% of American employees had at least two weeks of vacation that they hadn’t used by the end of the year. Some might attribute this to the fact that the U.S. labor market is highly competitive but the bottom line is that taking leaves is important for the overall productivity and health of the workforce.
