This is a bad year to ask this question. A lot of people will have 12/24 and 12/31 as a holiday this year who wouldn’t normally. For example, my contract says when a holiday falls on a Sat, my employer can either observe the holiday on another day or credit us with an extra day of leave. They chose to give us the leave. Next year they have no choice - contract says when the holiday falls on a Sun it’s observed on Monday. Has nothing really to do with Christmas or New Year’s- the same policy applies to July 4th.
Boeing shuts down the week between Christmas and New Year.
No usage of employee vacation is required.
Allegedly it was done this way as a trade off for not getting some other days off during the year but as far as I can tell, the only usual holiday Boeing doesn’t get off is President’s Day.
My dad’s Ford stamping plant has a mandatory shutdown between Christmas and New Year’s. There’s another week in the summer too, I think that encompasses the 4th of July.
They’re required to have a plumber and a pipefitter there at all times, even during shutdown.
Presses don’t run but many skilled trade guys work for like sextuple time ($140,000/hr) doing maintenence while all the machines are down.
So during a plant shutdown, no one is using their vacation days. But they do have a week off.