NYT: "Europe Reluctantly Deciding It Has Less Time for Time Off"
 

Hi, maybe strictly this doesn't have to do with travel, but it's an interesting article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/07/bu...ss/07WORK.html

I've noticed the change, in regards to vacations, with the European financial firms over the last 10 years. I worked on a fairly large and complicated transaction back in 1992, that had to be finished by August 1 as I was being told by the NY office of virtually every European bank that they couldn't get the approval of the right people after that date.

As a US banker, you could actually catch a bit of a break in August as the unavailability of the Germans and French made things fairly quiet. Starting about 5 or 6 years ago, that stopped being the case.

Given that scale of the world economy and the rapid movement of money, goods and services I guess European vacation schedules were bound to be impacted.

Interesting. I know of someone who was told, though, to expect delays in custom-ordered home fixtures from Italy because factories tend to shut down in August. But if anything, banks will probably reflect a change in the underlying work ethic first.

Also thought that it was interesting that Bavaria thought about lengthening the work week to 42 hours. (I think that it was Bavaria -- will have to check the article again.)

I was always jelous of a friend who gets 6week (!) annual holidays by common law, working in Germany. I live in Switzerland and get only 20 days (4weeks including Sat/Sun).

Uhhhh..I think you can safely NOT hold your breath while this "change" supposedly occurs.

And why it should surprise anyone that "bankers hours" in Europe are any "worse" than they are here is beyond my comprehension.

It's a definite trend I've been observing for at least a decade. Time was you could count on Paris to be half-dead in August, count on 2-hour lunches as the norm, count on towns in the south of France to be asleep for 3-4 hours every summer afternoon. Not so now. It's a mixed blessing for travelers.

Hey TopMan,
Why do you assume that the only bankers in this world are the one's that work in the retail branches? I can assure you that in the 10 plus years I worked in the corporate banking sector, neither I nor any of my colleagues worked "bankers hours."

The reality of finance in the US is that virtually every major US company gets a fair portion of its funding from either European banks or European investors.

My point was simply that the days of the corporate finance market quieting down in August, have long since passed.

Ah yes, the joys of socialism.

One thing though -- shops and restaurants in Europe do seem to have more "relaxed" opening hours. In NYC it'd be unusual to have shops or restaurants closed on Sundays or during the weekends. So in that sense, the European ethic is still considerably different from the American one.

Interesting. And, I don't doubt the change you all are describing. But, I suspect many can still take their August vacations and do what Americans tend to do...stay in touch electronically for the important stuff.

I read the article too, and felt kind of sad about it. It was nicer for me to think that there's a large part of the world that is less-workaholic, more of a stop-and-smell-the-roses-and-savor-the-wine kind of culture. So commerce wins, but quality of life suffers.
Yes, I'm a capitalist, but I still have fantasies about a better way.

Thanks, 111op...very interesting.

An excerpt...

Europe's long siesta, it seems, has finally reached its limit ? a victim of chronic economic stagnation, deteriorating public finances and competition from low-wage countries in the enlarged European Union and in Asia. Most important, many Europeans now believe that shorter hours, once seen as a way of spreading work among more people, have done little to ease unemployment.

"We have created a leisure society, while the Americans have created a work society," said Klaus F. Zimmermann, the president of the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. "But our model does not work anymore. We are in the process of rethinking it."

Germany seems to have a lot of problems -- not that I've really been following European developments closely at all. The unemployment rate is supposedly over 10% and it's even higher in Berlin, I think.

By the way, the article has become the most e-mailed article on NYT in the past 24 hours. The themes must resonate with a lot of people.

Oh well, even with shorter vacations Europeans can, unlike Americans, still take weekend vacations in Europe. :)

Ah well, capo, not quite true. I just proved you wrong, in fact:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...p;tid=34511242

Granted, it was a long weekend. :-) I should do a Sunday return trip for once.

OK, you got me! :)

I know it <i>can</i> be done (I once flew from Seattle to Paris for only four days over Thanksgiving weekend) but it's not nearly as easily done.

Yes, no argument there, capo. After all, there's an ocean that separates the two. :-)

But I, unlike Europeans, can take weekend vacations in New York City, D.C., the Shenandoah Mountains, West Virginia, the Finger Lakes, etc.

Rufus, you can have West Virginia and the Finger Lakes. I'll take Verona and the Italian Lakes. :)

My wife and I were talking about this subject this morning: why do Europeans have more time off work than do Americans and, if we want more leisure time, how can we Americans achieve just that?

Well, when I got out of college in 1949, I worked five-and-a-half days each week, with one Saturday morning a month off by rotation among our small staff.

In my next job, it was 50-50 -- all day Saturday and Sunday off, every other weekend.

Later, I got a job with Saturdays off, and it paid twice what I made when I got out of school. So what I made and how much time I got off had no relationship.

How was this achieved? Well, I've come to the conclusion that unions fought for and achieved this kind of leisure. I never was a union member, but I enjoyed the fruits of their labor.

With more and more of American labor non-unionized and in competition with other workers overseas, the likelihood of further leisure liberalization (more time off) is very unlikely.

I'm glad that the Germans are finally waking up. There is no such thing as a free lunch.