Who Sleeps in on Martin Luther King Jr. Day?
A national study reveals how many people get a vacation day on MLK Day. Are you sleeping in today?
Do you get take time off of work for Martin Luther King Jr. Day? Because according to a study done by the Bloomberg BNA, only 32 percent of employees are sleeping in on Monday.
The study says about three in 10 employers give their employees paid time off. That's almost 30 years after President Reagan signed MLK Day into law. And according to the Bloomberg BNA study, the number of employers giving time off is increasing.
“The increase in paid leave reflects a one percentage-point change from last year's figures,” Bloomberg BNA wrote. “...Despite this small, though steady, increase, the average proportion of companies who observe MLK Day by giving employees a paid holiday for the past 10 years is 30 percent while the average proportion recorded in the 1990s was at 22 percent.”
However, according to the holiday’s official website, the time off is supposed to be spent as a day of service, not vacation. The official tagline, “a day on, not a day off,” calls for Americans to band together to solve the nation’s most pressing problems.
And according to Clayborne Carson of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, more people are demanding the day off from work than ever before.
"It's the one holiday we have that reflects America's best ideals of justice, equality, democracy and human rights," Carson told the Chicago Tribune. "It's part of our national heritage now."
Gloria Picchetti
8:52 am on Saturday, January 19, 2013
Instead of having a bunch of holidays that no one gets off why not have six weeks vacation every summer?