As more and more Americans struggle to catch their breath from longer workweeks and shrinking vacations, the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) stressed at the Adventure Travel World Summit in Seattle its endorsement of a minimum paid-leave proposal that would protect vacation time in the U.S.

The ATTA is the first travel organization to officially endorse the paid-leave initiative. The proposed legislation, sponsored by Work to Live, in Santa Monica, Calif., and the Seattle-based Take Back Your Time organization, which celebrated national Take Back Your Time Day on Oct. 24, would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to grant three weeks of time off for anyone who has worked at a job for a year. Unlike 96 other countries, the U.S. has no law governing vacations.

“The ATTA understands that the real adventure these days is finding time to have a life, as vacations become an endangered species,” said Joe Robinson, who launched the minimum paid-leave effort with the Work to Live campaign and is a member of the board of Take Back Your Time, a broad coalition of organizations committed to fighting overwork and time poverty. “Support from the ATTA is an important step on the way to making minimum paid-leave a reality.”

“Aside from the obvious positive business ramifications for the tourism industry, the ATTA is seriously concerned for the physical and relational health of people in America,” said ATTA President Shannon Stowell. “Unhealthy, overworked and unbalanced lives cause significant negative societal ripples. The U.S. government must recognize its role in helping people seek and find balance to spend more time with their families and friends, more time in the outdoors and more time to do things like volunteer and travel.”

In Europe, citizens get four and five weeks by law; in Japan and Canada two weeks. Without statutory protection in the U.S., vacations are vanishing. Only 14 percent of Americans take two weeks or more at a time for vacation anymore, reports the Families and Work Institute. At a time of dwindling employee benefits, vacations are going the way of pensions and health care. One-third of American women don’t have any paid-leave anymore; one quarter of men, according to an AFL-CIO survey.

“Most Americans don`t even know that things could be different here,” explains John de Graaf, national coordinator for Take Back Your Time. “We set Take Back Your Time Day, an annual event to raise awareness about the epidemic of overwork and time poverty, on October 24th, nine weeks from to end of the year to highlight how much more on average American workers are working (350 hours) per year than Western Europeans. Those 350 hours are composed of shorter work weeks, more national holidays and the biggest chunk is vacation time.”

Without legal validation, vacations in the U.S. have the whiff of illegitimacy, which makes it harder for people to take a break. The minimum paid leave law would entitle Americans to take all their vacation time, something that is being encouraged by some companies, such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the H Group in Salem, Ore.. Vacations have been shown to decrease the risk of heart disease in men by 32 percent and by 50 percent in women. Time off shrinks medical bills, and increases productivity and job satisfaction.

“The true source of productivity in the knowledge economy is a refreshed and energized mind,” said Robinson.