Could Voters Reject a Long Vacation? : Workers’ rights: A lawyer is trying to qualify for the ballot an initiative giving employees a six-week holiday. The proposal is tied to social reforms.

Like most Americans, Richard Such, 48, has always had to make do with only two or three weeks of vacation each year.

But while sitting on a beach in the Yucatan last fall, the San Francisco lawyer decided to do something about it.

He whipped out the tools of his trade--a pen and a yellow pad--and wrote a ballot measure that would give most California workers the constitutional right to six weeks off with pay.

“I would have done it sooner,” he quipped, “but I have to work all the time.”

Such, who is now trying to raise money to print and circulate petitions for the initiative, needs the signatures of 675,000 registered voters to qualify it for the ballot. He said he does not believe he can get the signatures before 1991, at the earliest.

Such said he drew his inspiration for the proposed constitutional amendment from news reports about Western Europe, where many workers have gotten four- to six-week vacations for years.

“It just seemed like a basic worker’s right that we ought to have,” he said in a recent interview. “After all, our economy is just as advanced as theirs.”

Such took two days of vacation from his work at the First District Appellate Project, where he supervises lawyers who handle appeals for indigent Bay Area criminals, to write the initiative.

Anticipating complaints from employers that the initiative would force them to reward marginally effective workers, Such devised eligibility conditions that “offer workers a choice between . . . enjoying a six-week vacation and . . . maintaining lifestyles which are obstacles to efficiency on the job.”

He also had in mind certain social reforms.

Here is what he came up with. To qualify for six weeks off under the “Such Effective Worker Scheme,” an employee would have to:

* Have worked for the same employer for two years. “That is only fair to the employer,” Such said.

* Have voted in the last election, on the theory that participants in the democratic process make more concerned workers. “Of course,” Such acknowledged, “some workers can’t vote because they aren’t citizens. This condition will encourage them to overcome personal barriers to citizenship--such as difficulty with English--and that will make them better workers.”

* Have a high school education. Such said he wanted to encourage workers who have not graduated to go back to school to get a degree, and to discourage teen-agers from dropping out of school.

In addition, newcomers to the work force would have to have graduated from a public high school to counteract “the present tendency of affluent families to give up on the public schools.”

To qualify, an employee would have to have used fewer than 10 paid sick days in the preceding year, and have refrained from smoking on the job and from abusing drugs or alcohol.

Workers who were convicted of drug possession or driving under the influence would lose their right to six-week vacations for 10 years.

Government workers would be excluded from the long vacations--a step that Such, a former public defender, took reluctantly to avoid charges that his proposed initiative would be too costly to taxpayers.

Finally, private employees who met all but one of the requirements could be eligible for longer vacations if they agreed to a “bonus” condition: agreeing to commute by car pool, public transportation, bicycle or motorcycle to their workplaces, or working within 10 miles of their homes.

Whether six-week vacations would be too costly is a matter of dispute.

The state legislative analyst, who has reviewed the initiative at the request of the attorney general’s office, concluded that it would “substantially increase” costs to most businesses, and, by reducing their net income, lead to a “probably significant reduction in state tax revenues.”

But Such disagrees. He concedes that “a worker who works 46 weeks, instead of 49, might produce less,” but argues that most workers would become more productive.

Kirk West, president of the California Chamber of Commerce, said he was unfamiliar with the initiative and wondered if it was being seriously proposed. He said he had never heard of one “more likely to be opposed” by the chamber’s board of directors.

“I don’t think it’ll be taken seriously by very many people,” he said. “The employers of this state are most eager to be competitive.” If they thought longer vacations would improve their businesses, he said, they would be offering them now.