Faced with less time off, workers take more
Faced with a growing assault on time off by employers seeking to squeeze ever more productivity out of them, workers are increasingly finding that the only way to get away from the workplace is to play hooky. As employers have cut back on or eliminated paid and unpaid personal days, and paid and unpaid vacation time over the past few years, and changed rules about carryover over unused time off, workers have resorted to using sick days for non-illness reasons, and trying to take more vacation time than they are now allowed. As a result of forcing their employees to break the rules just to get a little time off, many employers are finding that they must now deal with an increased incidence of unscheduled absences and falling employee morale that threaten the productivity they sought to enhance.
See "Faced with less time off, workers take more", STEPHANIE ARMOUR, USA Today, October 28, 2002