It’s Time To Wake Up And Smell The Inequality

American Workers Are Cheated

The U.S. stock market hit a new record on Tuesday, encouraged by the strongest gains in home prices in 7 years and a 5-year high in consumer confidence, new signs that the economy is recovering more steadily. In the meantime, the average American is still waiting for the wealth to trickle down while struggling with relatively high unemployment rates, and abysmal wage growth.
Those are not the only problems that middle class families are facing in today’s job market. A new study from The Center of Economic and Policy Research found that the U.S. is the only developed country that does not require employers to offer a paid vacation for their employees. Among 21 developed nations, all except the U.S. have laws that make employers offer between 10 and 30 annual paid days for vacations. However, the picture is not all bad; about 77 percent of American workers still receive paid time off from their employers at an average of 13 days per year.
This number is still small in comparison with other developed countries like France or Germany  where they offer more than 30 days of paid time off if we calculate the vacations and holidays together. Back to the U.S, Even among those % 77, a fewer workers are asking for time-off. The job insecurity in today’s market makes them more hesitate to ask their employers for a paid vacation, or even any type of time-off.
A decent amount of recreational time is not the only “privilege” the American worker lacks in compare with their European peers. As a matter of fact, the United States is also the ONLY developed nation that does not require employers to provide a paid maternity leave. That means a working mother of  a new born child will not be paid for the time off she spend with her child in the first weeks after giving birth. In other words, she is forced to go back to her job as soon as she delivers the baby; otherwise, she might lose her job. That isn’t true in all cases, but the fact remains that legal protection is not there.
The lack of federal regulations and laws that provide the workers paid time off to spend  with their families exposes the social difference in what is considered a privilege or right. Europe, for example, has reached the level where they redefined basic needs to reflect a higher quality of living. The European worker enjoys rights that are still considered “privileges” in the United States, be it universal healthcare, or paid time off. It is worth to mentioning that the US worker productivity is the highest in the world, and it has increased steadily since the beginning of the recession. During the massive layoffs in 2008-2009, employers have put more work and pressure on the remaining employees, who are afraid to lose their jobs.
With record profits in the first quarter and the recent surge in stock prices, US corporations have never been richer, yet the job gains are still very modest, and wages are barely growing. The workforce is squeezed with more job stress, less money, less recreational time, and also suffers due to the lack of sufficient protections for workers.
We are becoming a purely capitalist society that benefits the wealthy and big business alone and neglects the average middle-class worker, who is, in reality, the back-bone of our consumer-based economy. Nevertheless, corporations and politicians are not the only to blame for this workforce’s conditions. The workers’ lack of knowledge about other societies and countries’ experiences is also to blame. We tend to not pay attention to what other countries offer for their citizens and taxpayers, what kind of social and economic model they adapt, and how is their tax money spent. “American exceptionalism” is blinding us to the accomplishments of other cultures.
It is hard to mention the privileges and rights other developed nations enjoy without mentioning universal healthcare. The United States is also the only developed nation that does not provide universal healthcare for all of its citizens. Approximately 25 percent of the US population is without any type of medical coverage, despite being the top country worldwide in healthcare spending (almost 18 percent of GDP). Many of our politicians still consider the choice of aborting a baby as a murder, yet rejecting policies that allow 30 million people to access proper healthcare is not considered “attempted murder” for some strange reason.
The alarming reality is that we are facing a new type of slavery. Employees are becoming slaves for the greed of large corporations;  we are doing much more, while getting much less, and told to be thankful for having a job in this “bad” economy, when profits are in record territory.