According to my sources (and it is amazing what bizzare sources you come up with when you study Japanese language from a bunch of expatriate Japanese feminists) the law was enacted in 1947 but women were embarassed to take seiri kyuka so nobody every took advantage of the law. In fact, it was such a rare thing that men who took a couple of days off to look after their families were jokingly referred to as taking seiri kyuka. When the equal employment opportunity act was enacted in 1986 these sexual differentiations in employment terms were eliminated.
So… seiri kyuka never was really a cultural thing, it never existed before 1947 and it never really existed when it was legally mandated between 1947 and 1986. And now it’s gone anyway.
Couple of quickies:
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On the number of holidays in the U.S., Cecil was citing the average amongst large U.S. companies. Government and banks tend to give a few more, other companies tend to give a few less. Nine is a reasonable approximation of a mean.
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On Japan and menstrual leave, I will have staff look into this more closely. Might have been a staff research error; as Cecil mentioned in the column, he relied heavily on outside staff for some of the details for this column. And, of course, Cecil himself doesn’t make mistakes.
Yep, I know that’s true. However, as per the previous posts, what the law mandates as a minimum and what you actually get are different things. I have been on the “20 day holiday, hand to mouth” treadmill too, but the company for which I work is exceptional (pay too!).
As a slight aside, but hopefully furthering this discussion, after 15 years in my company you can have an extra 5 days holiday per year or an extra weeks holiday per year. The vast majority choose the holiday over the money - what would be your observations on this? (a fair mix of people make it to 15 years across grades, sex, pay scales etc in this 3000 person organisation).
bungie_us wrote:
I’ve never lived / worked in the US, but do business on the other side of the pond. No amount of money ever, ever could tempt me away from spending more time at home watching my kids grow up. If that is the “price” I have to pay, so be it: it is one I make willingly and gratefully, knowing that others may not have the choice as I do.
Am I picking this up wrong, in America do you get paid for holidays?
It seems like you don’t
In Ireland, I get 26 days holidays (21 + 5 extra because I’m management and therefore need the rest!) ALL PAID: IE I get 52 weeks pay every year.
The 26 days are work days eg 5 weeks and 1 day, which can be taken off when I like , except for two or three which have to be taken between Christmas and New year - but who wants to work then anyway.
Please let me know the score and help me to feel smug.
Pergau, to clarify for you, a lot of people in the US get paid for holidays. The list I reeled off in my post above were all paid days off for me, and it was more or less typical.
However, as someone else pointed out, there is no legal requirement for paid holidays. As a result, there is entire class of service jobs in which paid holiday time off is extremely unusual. That’s not to say that people in those jobs don’t get the holidays off – they’re just not guaranteed anything, and if they do get them off, they’re not necessarily paid. It boils down to what you you can negotiate on the job, and seniority and the general attitude of your manager are critical.
Outside of the service sector, paid holidays are much more common. Which holidays you get varies, but six or seven paid holidays a year are fairly typical as a baseline.
Now by all means feel smug. You should.
So, what I’ve seen as the differences after moving from Boston to Amsterdam seven years ago:
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In the States, you tend to get vacation days based on the time on the job (e.g., after a few years at my first job, I went from two weeks to three per year); over here, it’s constant. Net effect when I switched from an American to a European contract was a gain of one day per year.
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The ‘13th month’ or ‘vacation pay’ is just a different way to package up your salary; every May over here, you get an extra month’s salary. Most job offers, though, are for an annual salary amount and take that into account.
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They don’t do any of that ‘first Monday in September’ crap over here. Here, Labor Day is May 1 (or whenever), and if it falls on a Sunday, well, you have the day off.
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Pay scales are WAY lower here than the States - at least the high tech sector. I’m making good money here and just hired someone to work for me out of our Boston office. He’s a corporate grade lower than I, and is making twice as much. But I get to live in Amsterdam.
Germans pretty much have the best deal in the Continent: most professionals have at least five weeks (usually six) and there are a lot more federal holidays. But, on the other hand, they have to live in Germany.
- derskCecil’s assertion that Germans get 24 days of vacation as a legal minimum is both correct and misleading, especially if you contrast it with the 30 days that German white-collar employees typically get.
Perhaps it would be more clever to compare weeks. The aforementioned 24 days are Monday through Saturday, which gives you four weeks. (The legal maximum work week in Germany is still 8 hours a day, Monday through Saturday.)
The industry standard, so to speak, are five-days weeks (mostly, but not necessarily, Monday to Friday) and 30 days off, giving you six weeks.
So if you compare 24 to 30, you compare apples to oranges.
Plus, there are usually extra days off if you move, marry, if you (or your spouse, as the case may be) give birth to a child, your parents or children die, etc. But these extra days off range from one to three days at a time, not fifteen.
I won’t contest the assertion that we Germans get a pretty good deal out of this. In many industries, you can convert hours of overtime to extra days off, so that you can travel even longer.
And we get to live in Germany! 
I brought this topic up last week in MPSIMS:
There is a link to an MSNBC article comparing vacation time among developed countries, which concludes Americans do get less.
Re: “Menstrual leave” in Muslim countries and Slug Signorino’s cartoon: I thought that looked like a tampon that the Islamic woman was putting down the timeclock slot.
Hmm… minimums for regular employees here in Puerto Rico (a US territory, mind you), we have:
Private sector non-agricultural: 1.5 workdays’ leave per month of work (18 workdays/year). Accumulation of leave and work on public holidays dependent upon your employment contract/union agreement. Xmas bonus of 2%. “Small businesses,” “Family shops” and some NPOs exempted.
Public sector: 2 workdays’ leave per month of service (24 workdays/year). Continuously cumulative and not that easy to exhaust; if on a particular year the accumulation exceeds 90 days, you get money back. When I resigned my political-appointee post as a result of the election, I got $12K after taxes in refunded unused leave. Xmas bonus flat $500, 20 public holidays (you don’t collect those who fall on Saturday).
jrd
As a school teacher in the U.S. I get a total of 75 non-weekend days off: 48 in the summer and 27 throughout the school year for Xmas break, Spring break and other holidays. It’s 179 days off total if you want to add in weekends too. I get 10 paid sick days and I pay into an insurance fund to get partial pay for any days over those first 10.
Yes, this is alot but: I don’t get paid nearly as much as I should, my workday rarely ends when I come home as I usually always have a stack of papers to grade, I have to cope with the raging hormones of ninth graders, and a fair number of those days off in the summer are consumed by continuing education classes and other training.
So, I’m wondering, how does this teacher’s schedule compare to the teacher’s schedules elsewhere in the world?
Thanks Bungie_us, I’ll feel smug for the rest of the day now.
Thinks: will I take tomorrow off?
As a state government employee, I used to get President’s Day off in February, but now get Martin Luther King day off instead.
As for menstrual leave, I think a day or two the week before menstruation would make more sense.
- Jill
Small HiTech contractor (mostly to the Gov’ment) in Huntsville, Alabama
No Holidays (Sorta). There are no real holidays just leave days. If you want to take Christmas off feel free. If you want to work it also fine. It all comes out of the same pool. As does sick leave (there is long term disability which is a seperate entity).
0 to 2 years 26 days
2 to 4 years 29 days (3 more)
4 to 10 years 35 days (6 more)
10+ 38 days (3 more)
Not sure if that’s 10+ or 15+ on the last one. (I’m no where close so I haven’t looked it up)
So if you don’t get sick a lot you can take some decent length vacations.
You can carry as much leave as you want from year to year or get paid for all in excess of 40 hours.
CujoQuarrel
United Nations staff of all ranks get 2-1/2 days annual leave for each month of service beginning on day 1. That’s six weeks per year. They need not take leave in any year and can carry forweard as much as three years worth so that one can accumulate enough to take off for 18 full weeks in one year. If you leave, you get paid for unused vacation days as well as for unused sick leave, which is also pretty generous. In addition, you get your own national holiday, e.g., take the day off on July Fourth when serving in Kosovo, as well as the major holidays of the host nation, e.g., May Day practically anywhere. When serving in stressful locations, like Kosovo, where I spent my summer vacation, or East Timor, you also get an ORB (Optional Recreational Break) every two months. This is five days off out of the country which is not charged against annual leave. Lest it be thought that UN people just loll around, the flip side in places like Kosovo is at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week of work. In two months, I got one day off. It wasn’t July 4, but my birthday on a Sunday, when I just rebelled.
Response to Chas E who claimed Cecil was wrong about citing Japan as a place where women receive time off for their menstrual period:
No, Cecil was not wrong, but he was perhaps too brief.
SD Research has confirmed with a Tokyo firm specializing in Human Resources, and the response is:
The law required time off for a female worker who:
(a) had physical difficulties druing menstruation, such as intense lower stomach pain, lower back pain, headaches, etc.; and
(b) worked in a job where menstruation caused a “medically negative effect.”
The second condition was removed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Law of 1986 (cited by Chas E). However, the first condition remains: the employer must grant time off to female workers who have intense physical difficulties during menstruation. The leave can be with or without pay, but the terms are required to be specified in the Work Rules or collective agreement.
So Cecil was correct (as usual) in including this in his list, although he did not bother to explain the details of a point made in passing.