No Vacation, No Voice: The Summer That Broke the Illusion

By Cliff Potts
WPS.News | August 7, 2025 | 11:00 AM CDT

While the managers post beach selfies from Martha’s Vineyard, the rest of us are sweating through twelve-hour shifts, mandatory weekend “asks,” and the 85-degree heat of an unventilated Amazon warehouse. Somewhere along the line, the American summer stopped being a season and started being a test: how long can workers survive without snapping?

It’s not a rhetorical question. According to the Economic Policy Institute (2023), only 52% of private sector workers in the U.S. have access to paid vacation time. And for the bottom quartile of wage earners, it drops below 25%. This isn’t about laziness. It’s about survival. Workers can’t afford to rest, because rest is now a privilege, not a right.

The irony? Executives love to talk about “burnout” like it’s a weather pattern that just happens, not the inevitable result of extraction economics. They offer yoga apps and “flex hours” while approving six-figure bonuses for themselves. As long as the warehouse stays full and the customer support line stays open, who cares if the HBA (home-based agent) hasn’t seen daylight in a week?

We are done pretending this is normal.

Every hour we labor while the front office jets off to Aspen is an hour stolen. Every PTO request denied because “we’re short-staffed” while upper management disappears to Cabo is another reminder: this is structural. It’s not bad luck. It’s class warfare. And we have the numbers to fight back.

August is the cruelest month. And it’s time it became the month we organize.

References:

Economic Policy Institute. (2023). The State of American Vacation Time. https://www.epi.org/publication/the-state-of-american-vacation-time/

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