2 week vacations only for Americans ?

Factual Questions
21

When I worked for large companies, personal days were distinct from vacation days in that you couldn’t string them together to get a longer chunk of time off, and tacking them on to either end of a vacation stretch was definitely frowned upon. Days off in succession required the use of either vacation days or sick days (and more than 3 sick days in a row required a doctor’s note). Although some people I knew took their personal days just to have the occasional long weekend, most used them for things like religious holidays important to the more observant, being home for maintenance work/deliveries, doctor/dentist appointments (in which case you could take just half the day), etc. You didn’t have to justify the use of your day, but you did have to clear it in advance with your supervisor.

Rashak Mani, sick days are typically “last minute” calls in the morning to your supervisor that you aren’t coming in that day. For my former employers, you were expected to call and confirm you would not be in for that day even if your boss had already been told the day before that you had a raging case of the flu or whatever. Sick days taken right after holidays or vacation were usually regarded with deep suspicion, and a couple of times I know the boss called the employee’s home during the day to make sure they were actually home in bed sick. Abuse of sick days, especially if it put others at a disadvantage, reflected poorly on your yearly merit reviews.

[aside] Of the two larger companies I worked for, Jonathan Woodall’s vacation scheme was the standard. The bummer for me personally is that in both cases I left just before I would have become eligible for 3 weeks vacation in the year. Since I went back to school in 1990 (through a 2d bachelor’s, grad school and now work for a tiny company), I’ve had exactly one full, uninterrupted week devoted solely to rest and relaxation, and that was in 1997. sigh [/aside]

22

In Ireland, there’s a legal mandatory minimum of 20 days paid vacation, though some employers offer more than this (e.g. in my company we just negotiated an extra day of leave per year worked, up to 25 in total). I believe this apples pro rata to part-time workers, though not to contractors. Sick days are theoretically limitless, though a doctor’s certificate is required if someone is off work for three consecutive days, and someone who is either too ill to do their job, or obviously swinging the lead, may find themselves out of a job.

23

At my company (a defense contractor), we start at 3 weeks of Paid Time Off that increases to 5 weeks with seniority. However, that includes sick days.

We also get a wonderful benefit: the whole company shuts down between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Having time off when the entire company is shut down changes the character of the time – there’s no anxiety about having to “catch up” when I go back.

24

One week, and I work for a pretty famous industry which leads me to believe it is probably pretty much standard for the healthcare industry(allied personel and nursing, anyway). Oh sweet Europa!

25

Ugh tath should have read"healthcare company", not industry :wally

26

I work for the local government authority in Nottingham, UK.
We get 20 days paid leave during the 1st 5 years and 28 days after.
We also get around 6 days in bank/National holidays.

Sick pay is limited to 6 months at full pay and 50% of pay upto 1 year when the individual case would be reviewed.
We had 1 guy who was off for 364 days and came back for 1 day, then went on the sick for another 6 months at full pay.
a Doctors note is always needed at anymore than 3 consecutive days.

God bless the UK :slight_smile:

27

Geezz… I am really sorry for you guys ! Getting long vacations sure seems hard. Doesn’t this result in stressed out and fatigued employees?

Sure it does. Think the employers care?

28

On my previous job, PTO (personal time off) was to be used for circumstances not covered by vacation or sick leave; for example, I’ve used it for a court appearance, to meet workers doing something to my house, and to participate in a walkathon for charity.

My problem has been with job hopping. Every time I switch companies I have to start all over again with the two-weeks vacation after a year’s employment (that has been standard in most of my jobs). HIgh level types can negotiate for additional vacation when they sign their employment contracts, but I’ve noticed that few do.

Some (few) companies offer a paid sabbatical after x number of years employment; Intel gives three months off after seven years employment. I understand that Microsoft and a few other high-tech firms do the same, but times change and that may not be true now.

When I worked in the airline industry, it was possible to trade days off or to pay someone else to work for you (there’s not much point getting free airline passes without time to use them). The day trade request had to go through a supervisor or manager but ensuring that you were ‘paid back’ was left up to the employees. This arrangement works only if you have something close to a 24/7 work environment.

29

shrug One employee goes on holiday, the others work a little harder, simple as that. It needn’t actually cost the employer any more.

In my experience, in fact, when an employee goes away for two weeks or more, more gets done in their absence than when they’re only away for a week. If they’re only gone for a week nobody bothers covering for them because they’ll be back to do it themselves soon enough. If they’re gone for two or more, somebody pretty much has to pick up the slack.

30

Over here the more important you are the less likely you are to be free to enjoy your actually month long vacations ! Its pretty common to have high level govt officials and private company directors going year after year with almost no vacation or at best 10-15 days.

31

In Canada the minimum is 2 weeks per year paid vacation. Every pay period the employer pays 4% of your earnings into an account that accumulates until you take your vacation, when it is paid out to you. If you don’t take a vacation you are still entitled to this money, which is how I used to get an “extra” paycheque every year. Employers of course have the option to give more time or a higher lump sum if they choose.

32

4 weeks paid vacation plus 2 weeks sick leave here for me in Australia. I cant imagine working for only two weeks vacation, I’d tell my employer to stick it.

What about hours worked for you guys? 37 hours a week in my case.

33

The trend in the US – at least for larger companies – is to move away from the traditional “two weeks vacation + 10 sick days” or whatever and move to a “bank” of paid time off that the employee can use for any reason.

In my current company (a ‘Big Four’ accounting firm), we get a certain number of days of paid time off based on job grade and tenure. 23 days is typical here, but it ranges from 18 to 28 days per year. Now, if I go the whole year without getting sick, I can (actually, must) take about 4 and a half weeks of vacation.

However, I can also use these paid time off days for doctor appointments, to stay at home for the cable guy, or to take care of a sick child (or to be sick myself). I’m free to use my 23 days however I want (as long as it doesn’t put an undue burden on the firm).

Personally I usually end up taking two weeks in the summer, a week near the holidays, and spreading the other eight days around for sick days and personal appointments. When I start having kids, that luxury may suffer.

34

That seems to be the main difference between the US and most other countries. In the UK there is no tie-up between vacation days and sick days. If you are sick you take the days off and that does not affect the number of vacation days. Some companies with also give additional days off such as compassionate leave for a death in the family. Again that has nothing to do with vacation days. When you go sick most companies will accept self certification for beween 3 and 5 days . After that you have to get a “sick note” from your GP or hospital.

35

And lets not forget our teachers. Around here they get mid-June through August off. There’s about three weeks at Christmas and another week for spring break. Teachers at the college/university level have different but similar schedules, those on the quarter system or on year 'round schedules are different.

Teachers get paid only for the months that they are teaching school, but they have an option to spread the salary payments out over 12 months, which is what most do.

As noted above, some receive sabbaticals, but they are not quite vacations. One is required to do something related to their work, such as continuing education.

36

Your q doesn’t follow your p. The absence of federal legislation on the subject has nothing to do with our form of government.

37

Sick days are not always tied up with vacation days in the us. I get 4 weeks vacation, 5 personal days and 13 sick days per year. The sick days carry over from year to year, but I can only use sick days for medical reasons or bereavement leave, so I have about 16 weeks of sick leave on the books. If I leave my job, I lose the sick leave. The personal days don’t carry over from one year to the next, and the vacation days I will get paid for if I leave. I would be better off with a single bank of time. My last job had similar rules-when I left, I stayed on payroll for a month while my vacation time was used up, but I lost about six weeks of sick leave.

38

Let’s try this again now that the hamsters have dined upon my initial attempt at putting something here…

Put me down as another report of vacation time varying wildly among companies here in the US.

Not long ago, I was with a company that gave no vacation time at all in the first two years. After two years, you got one week (5 days) vacation time. After four years, you got two weeks. From the start you got four days of sick time per year.

Another company gave no time during the first year unless you were in an accounting or operations position where they required two weeks off (a fairly common practice to help reveal cases where someone’s cooking the books or doing other shennanigans. Being off for two weeks typically is enough time for their actions to become apparent.)

Now, I’m at a “Big Five” bank, and from Day One, I get 25 days of PTO to use as I see fit - vacation, sick, waiting at home for delivieries, etc. PTO doesn’t accumulate, so it has to be used year by year. They do allow five days to be rolled over to the next year, but it has to be used within two months. I also get “comp time” as compensation for doing 24x7 on-call support - each week of on-call duty nets one day of comp time. There’s only three of us doing on-call, so that’s another 17 or so days per year. Above and beyond that, we get six paid holidays.

Truthfully, it’s almost too much time. Last year, I rolled three PTO days, plus the 25 days PTO plus 17 days comp - 45 days or nine weeks of time off. If they offered a day’s pay instead of the comp days off, I’d happily take that so I don’t have to keep doing “PTO burns” where I take a week off and do nothing, go nowhere and generally just loll around at home just so I don’t loose the time.

Oh, and above and beyond all that are the contingency times - jury duty, bereavement and stuff like that. Last year, I had to add a week of bereavement to the time-off mix. No bureaucracy involved there - I just put in the five days as bereavement and it was done and didn’t impact my PTO.

39

40 Hours is the norm for full time employees, but many work longer hours than that, especially if they are salaried. An average week for my husband is more like 45-50 hours, but he does get overtime for the hours over 40. He also works half-days on Saturdays 2-3 times a month. At my work, most office employees are salaried and can work up to 45 hours without additional pay, and 50 hours without overtime pay. ( I am paid hourly and I like it better that way, so any time over 40 hours I get overtime pay, which is time and a half.)

Another thing the US sucks at is maternity leave. Federal law says employers have to give 12 weeks off for Family leave, but it doesn’t have to be paid. Many employers only pay for a few weeks, and most only pay a percentage of your income. I am taking the full 12 weeks when I am due in July, but I have to use up all my vacation time first, and then I will get 60% for the rest of the 12 weeks. That is actually a pretty good policy compared to others I have heard, and until this year it used to be that only 6 weeks was paid at all, and then only up to $150 a week. Needless to say some people could not afford to take 12 weeks off so I consider myself lucky. My HR director is not pleased that I am taking the full 12 weeks off, saying that “Normal leave is 6 weeks,” but screw him. My boss is supportive, thank goodness.

40

Like many others, my company gives us what they call PTO (paid time off). Having been here five and a half years, I get 120 hours yearly, or four weeks. But the catch is that personal business such as doctor visits and the like also come out of that four weeks. On the other hand, most managers around here are pretty good about telling us not to log personal time taken as PTO, if they know we’ve been putting in a lot of hours.

Given my particular job and the systems I work on, I don’t really see how I could leave for four weeks at a stretch.