Contact Info

828-450-7641
info@fivedayweekend.org
www.fivedayweekend.org

Five Day Weekend Movement Launches
in Asheville, NC

Rallies for more time off scheduled in Atlanta, Greensboro, Charlotte and Raleigh

News Facts

“Friends of the Five Day Weekend” has launched an initiative to get the U.S. Congress to adopt a five-day weekend.
The campaign’s goal is to reverse the American workweek so employees can put in two days of hard work followed by five well-deserved days off.
“Friends of the Five Day Weekend” is based in Asheville, North Carolina.
The campaign currently is on a bus tour that will stop for several rallies in the coming weeks. The bus tour is called the “Work Less Express.”
The campaign’s premise is that Americans would be phenomenally more productive if they were more energized about their lives.
The movement is designed to offset the epidemic of overwork in America.
If the Five Day Weekend movement inspires people to come visit Asheville, great. If nothing else, “Friends of the Five Day Weekend” hope it motivates people to use their vacation time and enjoy life a little more.
Unlike 96 other countries, the U.S. has no law governing vacations.
Americans receive an average of just 14 vacation days per year, compared with countries like France where workers receive 39 days.
American workers typically do not take four out of their 14 vacation days each year. According to the 2006 Expedia.com Vacation Deprivation™ Survey, 33 percent of American workers surveyed do not take all of their vacation days, and 19 percent have either canceled or postponed vacation plans due to work.
The April 2007 issue of Travel + Leisure features a study demonstrating middle-aged men who do not take annual vacations are 20 percent more likely to have a non-fatal heart attack and 35 percent more likely to die from coronary disease than men who do.

Tour Schedule

04/17 – Asheville, NC kickoff (completed)
04/24 – Atlanta, GA (completed)
05/01 – Charlotte, NC (completed)
05/08 – Greensboro, NC (completed)
05/15 – Raleigh, NC

Quotes

Attributed to Roy McCrerey, Five Day Weekend Campaign Director:

Last year alone, working Americans threw away more than 570 million vacation days, largely because we were too overworked to take time off. How sad is that? It is time to stop letting work dominate our lives. It is time to prove that America works best when America works less.”
We want to raise awareness for this excessive waste of perfectly good downtime. It’s a crime all those vacation days are being lost. Asheville residents recognized the gravity of the problem, stood up and said, ‘We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.’
The Friends of the Five Day Weekend understood early on that 40 hours a week is 24 too many. You can’t begin to enjoy yourself, especially in a place like Asheville, where there’s so much to do. When you take five days off, you just feel better, and you’re far more productive the other two days.

About

The Five Day Weekend idea was born in Asheville, NC, as a marketing initiative for the Convention and Visitors Bureau. But as it came together, this initiative became more of a public service campaign aimed at bringing attention to the worsening epidemic of overwork and encouraging U.S. workers to get out and enjoy life.