The idea of paid vacation first appeared in France in the middle of the XNUMXth century. We understand how workers fought for their right to vacation and why it never became publicly available everywhere
Pioneers
Before the spread of factory work, the life of the artisan was subject to the cycle of the seasons, in addition, he was in a sense his own master and could always close the shop – if possible and desired. In agriculture, seasonality was even more pronounced. And besides, all workers rested on religious holidays and – in countries with a Christian historical tradition – on Sundays.
For the first time paid 15-day holidays were introduced in 1853 in France. However, only government employees could enjoy them. In 1871, the British Queen Victoria signed the Public Holidays Act, which provided people with several paid days off a year: four new holidays were introduced in England and Ireland, and five in Scotland.
In the late 19th century, most workers did not have paid holidays. In British factories, such a privilege was granted only to senior managers and supervisors, and the British Congress of Trade Unions (trade unions) first began campaigning for paid holidays for workers in 1911.
In Paris in 1900, metro workers received ten days of paid leave. In 1905, it was the turn of employees of electrical enterprises – they also received ten days (and since 1907 – 12). In 1906, employees of the gas works received vacations, and in 1913, clerical and commercial employees received the right to a weekly vacation. After the First World War, the number of workers entitled to an annual long and paid vacation expanded at the expense of transport workers in the Paris region.
And on July 31, 1910, American President William Howard Taft submitted to the US Congress, a fantastic proposal for those times, that every worker, in order to start the next working year productively, should have two or three months of vacation. Taft’s proposal stalled in Congress and was never passed.
In general, we can say that at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, paid leave was a matter of collective bargaining between the employer and trade unions.
Active struggle
In our Soviet country, on June 14, 1918, Lenin signed the Provisional Rules on Vacation, according to which “workers and employees of all branches of labor who have worked in an enterprise, institution or private person for at least six months without a break” had the right “once during the year receive leave with maintenance and issuance of it in advance. In 1918, the duration of the vacation was set for a period of two weeks.
In 1936, the International Labor Organization (ILO) adopted the Holidays with Pay Convention, which provided for an annual paid leave of at least six working days after one year of continuous work. The unions continued to raise the issue in their campaigns and to lobby the government for two weeks of paid leave legislation.
However, the ILO convention, even if ratified by the government, remained a non-binding document. In 1970, this convention was replaced, but the new document was ratified by only 38 states.
The idea of a right to paid leave was enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. Its 24th article reads: “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including the right to a reasonable limitation of the working day and to periodic holidays with pay.”
By the 1970s, the recognition not even of the need for a mere right, but of the importance of compulsory annual paid leave, was growing at the international level – not without the activity of trade union structures and the ILO. In Western Europe, many countries have introduced minimum paid leave of two to three weeks into their labor laws. ILO Convention (the same one, 1970) number 132 recommended at least three weeks of paid leave per year.
The situation today
In the 1980s, the extension of annual paid leave to four weeks became the subject of a long-running debate in the European Union. As a result, the EU Working Time Directive of 23 November 1993 provided (Article 7) for four weeks of paid leave. The UK abstained from voting and did not bring its legislation in line with the adopted directive, leaving leave issues at the mercy of individual agreements and collective agreements in the workplace. This continued until October 1, 1998 – in 1997, the Labor Party, close to trade unions (the British Congress of Trade Unions is the main financial donor of the party) and focused on the working class, adapted the legislation of the United Kingdom to the European one.
When it comes to vacations, the United States is a unique country – among the developed countries, it is the only one where there is no law at the federal level that would guarantee Americans the right to annual leave. This does not mean that the local hard workers are ready to work all year long without rest – Americans are people like everyone else – just vacation as an advantage of the place of work obeys the labor market. Most employers offer Americans 10 to 14 vacation days per year. But in highly competitive industries, such as the legal profession, workers may choose not to exercise their contractual entitlement to show loyalty to the company and beat less dedicated colleagues in the race to the top of the corporate ladder.
In Japan, until recently, loyalty to the company was one of the key factors affecting the salary of an employee – the gap between a novice and an employee with 20 years of experience in the same position could be multiple. Currently, they are trying to reduce this gaping abyss, but loyalty determines not only the salary, but also the duration of the vacation. For example, after six months of work in the company, an employee can count on 10 days of vacation, and when the length of service exceeds 6,5 years, his vacation will reach a maximum of 20 days. There is a problem with unscrupulous employers – they can force you to take vacations on public holidays, when they are not required to provide days off. Legally, this is possible, but the reputation of such employers suffers.
Majority Problems
The right to paid leave remains inaccessible to the self-employed around the world – since all their income actually comes when they work, the leave remains a matter of their own initiative, and therefore it is difficult to legislate for them the right to paid leave. It is important to note that this category includes not only representatives of creative professions, but also those who are employed in the gig economy: couriers, taxi drivers. In the case of gig workers, the right to vacation is a topic of constant debate between civil society organizations and trade unions that fight for the rights of workers, and technology companies, platforms that claim that they are not employers for them, but only information intermediaries.
Another problematic category is those employed in the informal sector, those whose work is not formalized in a legal order and, in fact, rests on an honest word. Their legal status puts them in an even more vulnerable position compared to gig workers. There are much more informally employed – in 2018, the ILO reported that 60% of the world’s working population is employed in the informal sector. Consequently, they are deprived of comprehensive social protection, including the right to paid leave. And unpaid can be fraught with job loss for them.