You know, I don't know of any place in Europe where employees are forced to take their holidays all at once. I'm sure there is some niche industry in some backwater country to which this applies, but I haven't heard of it.
No, we are 'forced' to take our holidays all at once to spend time with our children, who DO have 'forced holidays'.
In Spain there are still some companies that do the same, but this a less common practice each day. I guess it's because the shift from a industrial economy to a services one.
Yeah, it's becoming less common here too, but is still way more prevalent than in the US. It's not uncommon to see something like 1/3 of small shops closed in your average northern Italian town in early August.
