Need a haircut? Sorry, everyone is 'en vacances'

It is typical for Americans to worry more about rich business owners keeping profits, then their workers getting treated with decent health care and vacation time. Why is it that so many Americans fail to understand that 'the little people' make these businesses work in the first place and deserve much better treatment than what they are getting.

LauraM, if someone has 20 - 30 days of paid vacation, it doesn't mean that they take their vacation days all in one stretch. A summer holiday may last two weeks, then another one is taken in winter to go skiing or spend Christmas holidays with the family. People who have children take their vacation adapted to the school holidays. In Germany for example, the different federal states spread out the summer school holidays between June and September (e. g. Norther states start their school year already, while the Southern states just begin their summer school holiday), that way they alleviate some of the traffic jams they would have if all states had school holidays at the same time (driving to vacation destinations by car is common, since spending Germany itself is the #1 vacation destination for Germans). Some companies close plants for a few weeks in summer (Werksferien), others have flexible vacation schedules for employees. Of course "everyone" is never on vacation in areas like law enforcement, health care or seasonal business like tourism. That's the situation in Germany, which I'm more familiar with. Generalizations about Europe are usually a bit tricky, since the continent contains such a wide variety of countries, economic systems and cultures.
As for unemployment rates - my guess is they are a lot more tied to economic crisis or structural changes (jobs moving to low-cost countries) than to the impact of paid vacation days.

LauraM

Answers are quite easy.
The tourism industry is the obvious exception: a lot of restaurants, small hotels and so on only open in summer time, and close in winter (except the ones located in the mountains, of course)

For other services, basic assistance is guaranteed anyway (even if it is true that - at least in Italy - some public services work at lowest rythms)
A for private companies is the same: I work in Milan financial district, and I can assure you that for at least in the two central weeks of August everything is frozen.
And in London, Paris, Madrid or Franfurt is not that different.

It's just a matter of balance between life and work, and of productivity: you get more from people not imprisoning them in their offices but offering them a better balance between work time and private time. It's a fact.

Of course European system has its cons (like any system), but if I take a look around at what the alternatives look like, well, I think it wins hands down, from this point of view at least.