Working Conditions and Benefits

Before XMas we had some American colleagues over from our US office. As is customary we took them to the pub after work and given the time of year talk inevitably turned to holiday plans. The US guys stated that they received 10 days annual leave per year as compared to the standard 25 received by employees of the same company in the UK. The UK entitlement is on top of the public national holidays (of which there are 8 per year I believe)The US guys get some sort of healthcare package which I imagine is worth a fair amount.
Employees for the same company in other European branches get even more leave entitlement than the UK staff.All of this got me wondering about the working practices culture in different countries, the perception of work-life balance in different countries and whether there is any evidenced conclusions about worker productivity in these different worker environments.Given we US and European members here I thought I'd ask what people's thoughts and experiences are.Do you US guys look at us Europeans with envy? Do you think we are a bunch of lazy slackers? Do the Europeans think the American way is the way of the workaholic? And aren't we all in the developed Western nations heading down the American path of longer hours, less leave and less employment rights anyway (flexible labour market being the term used here in the UK)

The data you provide is productivity per hour worked. For example - The US, for every hour worked, produced 31 percent more output relative to the UK.If those in the US are more productive per hour and they work more hours too then in terms of productivity per capita they must be absolutely kicking butt.Looking at wiki gdp per capita Link shows the US ranked 10th and the U.K. ranked 27th.So maybe the US has got it right on things like employee leave entitlement, non-contracts and generally (from a European perspective) rather harsh employee rights.......

Good question. Because as well as the trend for the UK to be slowly heading down the reduced employee rights path that the US has already implemented, we are also progressing down the path of the proceeds of growth being focussed at the top. Stagnating incomes for the majority and runaway accumulation at the top as the proceeds of improved productivity remain concentrated for the few.So - In pure productivity terms the US model seems successful. But who is it successful for?In terms iof international comparisons how can we measure whether the US or European model leads to better outcomes for all/most in terms of standard of living and quality of life?