Wait a minute. Are you saying that agreements and contracts have no meaning in the "free market"? If the government "should leave the free market alone", then what prevents the free market from hiring 12 year olds, having unsafe working conditions, or any of the other many abuses formerly used by companies? Are you saying that it is within the ethics of American business to forge an agreement with an employee with no intention of honoring it? Are you saying that if such an agreement had the weight of the law behind it that companies would "negotiate down to $40k, then $30K, then down to $20K, or fire them? Is this what we are made of?

I was not presuming that most companies stiff employees of their vacation time, but I was responding to this article, which is suggesting that it is becoming endemic for people to feel they can't take their vacation for various reasons. Your "free market" has not done well in the past in having the welfare of its employees at heart without some sort of governmental insistence through workers' laws to force them. The free market is people, and people have to be taught, or sometimes forced, to be civil.

No one should be fired or downgraded for taking a vacation that has been fairly negotiated or offered when hired. If the free market can provide such assurance, then great. If it can't, then it must stand in the corner with its dunce hat on.