>guys who can afford to pay 6-12 weeks of salary to someone who isn't working
This is the basis of the misconception that time off is optional. For a healthy life, time off is not optional. Denying employees sufficient time off is effectively asking them to sacrifice their health and well-being for the company, a condemnable practice.
As to how much time off is sufficient or necessary, and in what sized chunks of time, I would leave that to the professional psychiatrists to figure out.
People should take time off, I agree. It's not a matter of the employer denying it, they aren't dictators. Citizens in the United States are free persons and they can choose not to work for an employer who they don't feel is willing to buy them enough vacation time. The question is, "Who should have to pay for [large amounts of] vacation time?"
Also, I don't know if you've ever been involved with a small business before, but "can't afford it" in that context usually means "literally do not have that much money", not "can't afford to take it out of my bonus because then I'd have to buy last year's yacht model".
Citizens in the United States are free persons and they can choose not to work for an employer
With unemployment in the US at 7 % and voluntary quits still unusually low the picture isn't nearly as sunny as you paint it. One does wonder why you are saying things that aren't quite so.
If you are running a small business yourself, consider that in more civilized countries, like the EU, small businesses are exempt from many regulations.
If you are running a small business that isn't doing too well, perhaps it's time to let it go under - the market has spoken, it shouldn't be kept afloat for a few months more on the backs of your employees.
You are assuming that the small business owner is cooling his heels in some expensive yacht. While the employees back at the office are grounding their bones to dust to make such a thing happen.
The reality is far from that, the business owner is taking far bigger risks, has much more to lose and suffer due to failure and at any given point of time is going through far more stress, putting a lot of effort and has much more bigger role to play than some one who just joined the company can possibly fathom.
Now you are virtually asking them to pay you, while you don't work for nearly half the year(If you take vacation, sick leaves, and weekend off's into account). Then you have this 'working from home' thing, which is synonymous with having to take a leave, without officially taking one(Sorry but that's how WFH is being abused these days). Then you have pay them health insurance, be perfectly OK with this 5 hour work per day thing.
Putting this all together, work hardly gets done. Now not all businesses fit into a typical engineering domain, where money can be made non-linear to efforts(It's exceptionally difficult even for these businesses). There is no way ordinary office businesses can survive, let alone make profit in such situations.
If you want them to simply shut down. Its likely they will start up in some other country where the math makes sense.
Giving employees less vacation is just the same as underpaying them, except it's even worse for morale and turnover. If a business can't afford to pay it's employees a reasonable market rate, it either needs to hire more junior folks or start charging more.
> The question is, "Who should have to pay for [large amounts of] vacation time?"
An utterly meaningless question. In your "modern" contracts-only world, it's still the employers who pay for it, because the employees would earn the money for between-contracts "vacations" through sufficiently high contract rates.
> Also, I don't know if you've ever been involved with a small business before, but "can't afford it" in that context usually means "literally do not have that much money"
The technical term for a business incapable of paying its employees is "bankrupt". Keeping such a business running is, in many jurisdictions, a crime.
Not granting adequate time off is effectively the same as failing to pay wages, and a business that cannot do it needs to die sooner rather than later.
Keeping it running doesn't appear, in the UK, from the information you provide to be a crime unless it is done dishonestly to defraud creditors (fraudulent trading), and mere current inability to meet payments isn't enough. Lots of acts done with intent to defraud are criminal -- the fundamental wrong criminalized is fraud.
Mere trading while insolvent, without dishonesty and intent to defraud, appears to be an unlawful-but-not-criminal act that results in personal civil liability for company debts. "Unlawful" and "criminal" are not the same thing.
This is the basis of the misconception that time off is optional. For a healthy life, time off is not optional. Denying employees sufficient time off is effectively asking them to sacrifice their health and well-being for the company, a condemnable practice.
As to how much time off is sufficient or necessary, and in what sized chunks of time, I would leave that to the professional psychiatrists to figure out.