If paid vacations are a part of a person's compensation package, then, by law, they should be paid.

If someone contracts to be paid $50,000 a year and the employer pays only $40,000, you can take them to court: they stiffed you. So, if you are "owed" three weeks of vacation but work 51 weeks in the year, you are owed two weeks. I think the value of those vacation weeks should be paid in cash if someone does not take the time off.

You are paid a certain amount for every week you work, plus the promise of being paid that amount for 3 weeks in which you don't work. If you work in those three weeks, you should be paid that amount, in addition to your salary.

If this were the law, employers would be pushing people out the door to take their vacations, since it would cost them..

If the majority of companies are stiffing people on their vacation (as your post presumes that they are.) Then your worker who is getting paid 50K plus vacation (but he isn't "allowed" to take it.) will get a fresh off the press new contract for 40K plus vacation when it becomes mandatory for him to take the vacation. The government needs to leave the free market alone.

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.

Perhaps you mistook my meaning. I am not by any means suggesting that 12 y/o should be working or any other outrageous labor speculations.

What I'm trying to say, is that if it costs X number of dollars to have a new employee for a job and that money is divided into A, B, and C for that employee the company will try and keep X about the same. For example. If it costs 60,000 to have an employee between wages, 401k matching, program, health care, and vacation (that is taken as the norm within the company for whatever reason.) The company will always want to keep X the same. So if the norm in the company is that only half of the people take a vacation (for whatever reason) then when it becomes law that everyone must take vacation the equation will have to change.

With the given increase in expense because someone is on vacation (ie. not producing which is a loss to the company) item C then to keep the companies costs the same then there will have to be a reduction in portions A or B (401k, healthcare, or salary.) So to keep costs the same the company will either reduce the salary or other benefits of it's current employees or find a way to do the same work with less people. Unless you want the government to fix your salary is well there is nothing that would keep a company from changing your salary or benefits when that would normally be an appropriate time to do so in order to keep it's labor costs the same but give you your mandatory vacation time.

Fascinating, and I am not sure I could follow it all. Perhaps I am too literal or simplistic.

If a company has fixed an employee's compensation as you describe, then they have built into their calculations the cost of the employee being off the job and on vacation. It is already there. If the employee does not take the vacation and works, then the company is getting the allotted vacation time "free" from the employee's unexpected production. If the vacation is taken, there is no unexpected cost, so no adjustment in salary or other offered benefits is warranted. If companies pile on work so that employees feel guilty about taking vacation, then the employee should be compensated for the loss of that vacation, which has already been factored in as paid, unproducing time.

But, I am self-employed, so I have no problem taking time off if my work is done. My boss always understands!