Sometimes it isn’t so much that we don’t dare, but want to hold some potential time off in reserve.
We do get more time, at most companies, when we’ve been working there a few years. I’ve been at my job for eight years, and I get four weeks combined sick/vacation time, not counting company holidays. True, my sick time does have to be subtracted from that, but I’ve never taken more than two or three days off in a year.
Sometimes policies are set by negotiation with unions, then by being “management” you get the same holiday days off. For example, Tuesday (election day in the 'States) was a holiday for me so that all of the union members could go and obey the orders of the union.
At my company, salaried folks start at 80 hours and progressively work upward – I’m not sure what the upper limit is. Maybe five or six weeks. With your supervisor’s approval, you can also purchase up to 80 additional hours every year. I say “hours” because we’re not limited to entire days. We also get 5 personal days and 5 sick days, although I think that that’s changing next year to reduce costs (I think it’s still 10 “free” days though).
Am I an idiot for never using these? I seem to equate personal days with sick days, and really never take either. If I am sick I invariably just make up for it (comp time).
Sick leave looks to be a significant influence in addition to vacation days.
I don’t know what the situation in other European conzties is - here in Germany you get your normal salary for the first six weeks of being certified unfit to work (after that a lower benefit paid by the health insurance system kicks in). If you get ill during your vacations the days that you had been unfit for work during vacations are not counted as vacation days. Last year working days missed due to illness or rehabilitation were 6.2 days/employee in Germany.
It really helps if you have the occasional longish downtime (seven years ago I spent four weeks unfit to work, recupeating from pneumonia; the year before last I spent four weeks losing weight in a health resort courtesy of the pension insurance scheme (not vacations but a very schedule-driven course of treatment and exercise on 1200 cal/d). Missing a month’s salary would have been major suckage in these instances.)
Yep, sick leave certainly seems to be a major difference. I’ve got a suspicion that in Britain it wouldn’t even be permissible to deduct holiday time from an employer if they are sick. If you don’t have a separate sick leave entitlement (most people not on an hourly wage do), you still get Statutory Sick Pay, which is a benefit from the government paid via the employer.
I mean, I’ve never taken more than two or three days off sick in a year, though I probably have to revise that estimate up a bit. Maybe a week or so, out of the four that I get.
Christmas Day and Boxing Day [26th] are invariably public holidays here and a few years ago [1970s, I think] New Years Day was added as most people took it anyway or called sick. The result is that the whole country pretty much closes down between (this year) the 22nd and the 2nd.
Hmmm - that’s quite a bit different. Here you get ‘holiday’, which you can use up in any way you like, but which normally you need to OK with your boss. If you have an emergency and your boss decides to be a dick about you not showing up, then you’re SOL - however most decent-sized companies have polices about emergency leave etc. so if your boiler explodes or your kid gets really sick you wouldn’t have any trouble getting time off to sort it out, and if your mother dies you would get compassionate leave.
Sick leave - I seem to remember you can self-certify as ‘sick’ for up to 3 consecutive days and/or some set number of days in a 30 day period, then you need a doctors certificate for more. This is not counted toward any allowances. So if you get the flu or the raging trots, you can take a couple of days off to recover without any fuss, but you can’t just arbitrarily bunk off whenever you feel like it. Long-term sick leave is another matter, which has been mentioned.
From here the UK gets 8 public holidays on top of the holiday allowance, which in my company starts at 22 days - I’m up to 27 at the moment and get another next year.
Company policies do make a big big difference though. The sweetest deal I’ve ever heard of was from a friend who worked for a company in Switzerland. They introduced a card access system to track working hours and attendance. To sweeten the pill and stop the workers council kicking up a fuss, they also introduced a policy that any time you worked over your salaried 35 hours a week were added to your holiday allowance, calculated to the second
Four weeks? Thats 20 days? You’re in the wrong job mate.
Including public holidays (eight days, often added to annual entitlement these days rather than being fixed dates) i’ve never worked anywhere in my life that was less than 5 or 6 weeks.
My current employer is 25+8 (rising to 30+8 at 5 years service) and i took a holiday cut to come here.
And seriously, sick days coming out of your pathetic two weeks leave? One bout of flu and it’s cancel that overseas holiday you’ve already booked and paid for, you’ve got no holidays left. Man, thats progress. Is this correct, do sick days really come out of your annual leave?
I guess my attitude just illustrates the cultural difference but it seems that the US is a bloody backwards and barbaric place to work.
Two weeks??? Two???
Most salaried employees that have worked for larger companies for over a year get two weeks of vacation. If there is a set number of sick days, it would tend to be five or so. That would make the de facto standard to be three weeks total. However, many companies only give 5 days vacation for the first year so it would be two weeks total. I have only worked for one company that had a set number of sick days however. The rest just had an honor system with no hard limit. The flip side of that is that you are supposed to be at work every day you are not truly sick so most people don’t get to take a large number of sick days. We really don’t get much vacation. I got three weeks at my current job and I considered that very generous but it is a rather seasonal business and we can’t really take any days off for 6 months of the year and we work lots of overtime. They try to make up for it by giving an extra week when times are slower.
Dude, did you read my post? Sick leave is generally in its own category, it does not normally come out of “vacation” time, and is additional to 2 weeks which is “standard” for recent employees. If you are sick a lot you will generally use up your paid sick leave, and then if you’re really sick it might switch to Short Term Disability, but either way (in general) your long-planned international trip remains unaffected.
My SO gets 2wks vacation, 10 sick leave days and 2 “personal days”, for a total leave of 22 days/yr.
In my last Corp job I started with 2wks vacation, + 9 Personal for total of 19 days, then after 5 years I got 3 wks+ 9 Personal for a total of 24.
Some employers let you “roll” unused sick or vacation time to the next year, and Hourly employees often get paid out for unusued sick time at the end of the year.
While it is my no means as favorable as in Europe/Britain, I don’t think its as awful as you’re painting it. The bigger problem is people not taking the leave time they’re given.
Oh, and I forgot, 6 standard Paid National holidays are never counted in that total. So, technically, total time off when I left my last job was 31 days.
Heh, I’ve heard theories about how workplace productivity would increase if only people would take their sickdays and stop making everyone else sick and miserable. Actually, I am usually used as an example when this conversation comes up in any place I’ve worked :smack:
I am self-employed, I have no vacation time, so shut it.
The requisite…