MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

With 33 days off a year, Argentines enjoy holidays and tourism industry booms

Oscar Ghezzi, President of the Argentina Tourism Chamber. ”It's an important generator of excellent jobs, and also profits

Thousands of Argentines began spilling out of the capital Friday night to make the most of the long weekend, which congress approved just three weeks ago. Monday's Sept. 24th holiday makes for a total of 19 national paid holidays this year. Only Colombia comes close in Latin America, with 18.

Many other countries don't extend such benefits to all workers nationwide, according to a 62-nation survey published last year by Mercer Human Resources Consulting. For example, Lebanon has 21 bank holidays, celebrating two Easters and two Good Fridays honouring different religions, but only government and financial sector workers can count on getting paid for the days off.

In contrast, Argentina legally requires all private employers to provide time off or extra pay during all national holidays.

The United States has just 10 national holidays, but for many workers even these aren't a sure thing. The U.S. stands alone among industrial nations in providing no legal guarantees of time off or holiday pay — not even for Christmas or the Fourth of July, said John de Graaf, who runs Take Back Your Time, a group promoting worker protections in the U.S. and Canada.

“It's not good. The thinking is so short-term. It might help the bottom line and shareholder prices in the short run, but in the long run we pay for this stuff,” de Graaf said. He said studies show short holiday breaks refresh workers and make them more productive, while lack of time off can increase stress and health problems.

Argentina's newest holiday, granted for this bicentennial year only, honours the day in 1812 when revolutionary war hero Manuel Belgrano led his troops to victory against Spanish royalist forces in the Battle of Tucuman.

More importantly for President Cristina Fernandez, it gives her citizens yet another opportunity to leave their homes and spread their pesos around, underpinning the consumer spending that has kept Argentina afloat in rough economic waters.

Cristina Fernandez has made a point of creating new holidays and moving others so Argentines can take enough time off work to drive or fly long distances to the country's tourist destinations. Honouring patriotic heroes, dictatorship victims and soldiers who died fighting against Britain for the Falkland Islands, she made such a policy of it that September had been the only month this bicentennial year without a holiday — until congress' recent vote added it in, too.

Some labour experts say requiring employers to pay for so many holiday harms profits, endangering the economy.

Tourism businesses, however, credit the holidays with turning around local economies across Argentina. More than 9.5 million people travelled during the year's first seven long weekends, spending 1.6 billion dollars and increasing the GDP by 7 percentage points, according to the Tourism Ministry, which estimates that 1.2 million of the country's 40 million people directly owe their jobs to tourism.

“Tourism is a key socio-economic measure for the country,” said Oscar Ghezzi, president of the Argentina Tourism Chamber. “It's an important generator of excellent jobs, and also profits. It's an activity that spills over and mobilizes all the economies, from big cities to small towns.”

But does all this time off slow down the overall economy? Could Argentina's abundance of holiday joy push businesses to invest in other countries instead?

Not necessarily, because another key factor is how many vacation days governments require employers to provide. Argentina trails many other nations by insisting on just 14 days for beginning employees. Together with the 19 holidays, it means Argentine employers have to provide at least 33 days off a year, the same as Colombia, which requires a minimum of 15 days' vacation.

France, Austria, Greece and most Nordic countries require 25 days paid vacation, which together with national holidays makes for a world-leading 38 days off in Austria, the Mercer survey found. Venezuela leads Latin America with a total of 36 paid days off, while Morocco and Malaysia lead Africa and Asia with 32.

“The numbers of working days in Argentina are comparable with the rest of the region ... while Argentina has a high number of holidays, it requires fewer vacation days than other countries,” said Laura Roldan, who directs health and benefits research for Mercer Argentina. “From the business perspective this isn't a big deal. Yes, it's an additional cost, but it's something manageable.”

China has a reputation for difficult working conditions, yet requires employers to pay for 11 national holidays and 10 vacation days, a total of 21, Mercer found. The United States doesn't legally require employers to provide any vacation pay at all.