Finland: A Plan for ‘Love Vacations’
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Published: April 17, 2008
A proposed bill before Parliament would grant Finnish workers, already entitled to 25 paid days of vacation a year and as many as 10 paid public holidays, one more week of “love vacation” to reduce, its sponsor said, a high divorce rate and revive passion in a population whose workdays are growing longer. The measure would allow Finns to connect “on an erotic as well as an emotional level,” Tommy Tabermann, a poet, actor and member of the Social Democrats, said in a speech introducing the measure last month. To get to a vote, his proposal needs the backing of 100 members, or half, of Parliament. It now has 13 signatures. Some lawmakers suggested that the idea might get more support if the leave were unpaid. “People can take love vacations but shouldn’t be paid for them,” said Bjarne Kallis, the head of the Christian Democrat delegation. “You have a lot of free time already today.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/wo...tml?ref=europe