In the US we have “public holidays” but the only people who are guaranteed to get them off work for the government. Private companies are not required to give people any time off at all, be it holidays, sick time, or vacation.
When I read about how many public holidays other countries get off, am I reading about holidays that only government workers are guaranteed to get off like here, or that everyone gets off? I realize that there are laws in most countries about paid time off everyone is entitled to - is this another case of that?
It’s taken as a given here that most employees will get public holidays off, unless their contract states that they may be required to work them, in which case they will get paid days off in lieu.
Pretty much the same here in Australia. Penalty rates [time and a half, double time or even more] can apply if you are required to work on a public holiday, or perhaps time in lieu. This is enshrined in state and national industrial awards and agreements.
The main exceptions are people on rolling rosters whose work day may land on a holiday. The overall level of pay is supposed to include an offset for any worker to occasionally work holidays.
Increasingly, however this practice is being corroded by reliance on a casualised and gig economy workforce.
Canada - labour standards are generally up to each province but AFAIK all provinces work like this: There is a list of officially designated public holidays. Labour standards say an employee who is required to work a holiday must be paid time and a half, or get a paid day off in lieu. People not required to work that day, if it is otherwise a regularly scheduled day, must be paid a day’s wages for an alternate day off (i.e. Christams falls on a Sunday); to simplify for part time employees the formula is 1/20th of wages earned in the previous 30 days.
It has some interesting anomalies. I worked for a company once that has shifts starting at 7AM, 3PM, and 11PM. Working the 11PM shift, I worked until 7AM on Christmas, but because the shift started on the 24th, regular pay for that shift. (The next shift was off with a day’s pay). Similarly, the concept was established before Sunday openings became common, so for example Good Friday is a statutory holiday but Easter is not. Some provinces treat Nov. 11 (Remembrance Day) as a holiday, some don’t. Union agreements may extend these concepts - more holidays (I.e. Boxing Day, not a Statutory holiday in some provinces; or higher holiday rates)
So basically, a store (or any business) has to decide if it’s worth the extra cost to be open the holiday, or if it’s the sort of holiday where everyone stays home anyway. New Year’s, Easter and Christmas come to mind as days the stores will usually stay closed. The Queen’s Birthday (actually, Victoria day or whatever they call it nowadays) not so. Most provinces have added a holiday of some sort in February “Family Day”(?!) because it can be a long time between New Year’s day and Easter.
Should add -
In Canada, if the business is usually open Saturday and Sunday, it will probably pay the extra to stay open. If it’s an office or some such business that is usually closed Saturday and Sunday, close the holiday too.
Because, note, you must give people a day off in lieu if you make them work. So close for the holiday, or be short-staffed for a week as everyone takes their turn. If the offices you deal with are usually closed, simpler for your office to close too. For factories, depends what’s easier and demand for product.
For the UK we have the following public holidays.
1st Jan New Years Day
19 April Good Friday
22 April Easter Monday
6 May Early May bank holiday
27 May Spring bank holiday
26 August Summer bank holiday
25 December Christmas Day
26 December Boxing Day
Almost all workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks’ paid holiday per year (28 days known as statutory leave entitlement or annual leave). An employer can include bank holidays as part of statutory annual leave.
Normally anyone who works on these public holidays is paid double or extra days leave in lieu of pay.
cite:
This is a minimum entitlement, some employers are more generous.
When the public holiday falls on a weekday people often use their annual leave to increase it to take a long weekend or a full week.
Even the Bible has something to say about working on holidays. But basically, elfkin, you read correct. Here in yurp, holidays are way more regulated than in 'murrica. It depends from country to country and work position to work position of course, but there are regulatory laws to pay workers xy% extra even if you are not public worker on those days. Same for certain stand ready stances. An that dampens but not completely prevents need for employers to force employees to work on holidays (and you need more of them, as working hours are VERY strictly regulated and enforced). On average there are about 10- 12 such days per year. In reality, on average, comparing both continents, in EU there are just slightly more chance that your typical business will be closed on holidays and probably just slightly better chance for workers to be paid more adequately. But that is it. It … is … just more … regulated. Still a lot of loopholes.
Germany
Public holidays depending on what state you are in somewhere between 11 and 15.
Vacation days legal minimum of 20. CLoser to 30 is common though.
Netherlands
Not too many public holidays. Two days of Christmas and the king’s birthday, Easter, Witt and Ascension day.
I believe the legal minimum is 24 days of vacation.
Belgium
Been a while since I worked there but in my memory they had at least one public holiday every month. Also had a shitload of vacation days.
Agree generally with md2000’s summary for Canada, except Saturday and Sunday aren’t public holidays, so no holiday pay for working those days.
Instead, there’s a statutory limit on hours pet week: 48 in Ontario. If the employee agrees in writing to work longer hours, then there’s overtime.
And, public holidays are different from vacation time. Each employee is entitled to a certain number of vacation days per year, in addition to the public holidays.
By the way, the country with the most public holidays is Cambodia. They used to have 27 but the president added another one last year to raise his approval rating before the elections.
Most big American corporations have the federal holidays off…New Year’s, MLK Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Some may throw in Christmas Eve, the day after Thanksgiving (because most people take it off anyway) and Presidents Day. At my old employer, which was a 24 hour facility, people who worked the holidays got a comp day to use later if they were salary, holiday pay if they were hourly
Generous to employers? The USA also generally has no separation pay standard as far as I can see. In Canada stat minimum unless you are “fired for cause” (bad behavior) is 2 weeks under 5 years and 3 weeks over 5 years. For more professional jobs where its hard to find a new one quickly it can range up to a month of pay for each year of service for a max of 24 months - depending on market conditions age how many laid off at once etc. it can get very expensive to dump someone over the side.
In England (Scotland may be different IDK) There is no statutory right for employees to take bank holidays off work. Any right to time off depends on the terms of the employee’s contract of employment. When an employee works on a bank holiday, there is no statutory right to extra pay – for example “time and a half” or double pay. Any right to extra pay depends on the terms of the employee’s contract of employment.
In today’s 24/7 economy, an increasing number of workers are required to work on bank holidays: Some might get double time and a day off in lieu; some might just get a day off (effectively having the eight days added to their annual leave) or be paid at an enhanced rate, and for some, Bank holidays are just another day at the coal face. The people with the best T’s & C’s are, as always, government employees and those with strong trades unions.
All full-time employees are entitled to 28 days annual leave, but everything else will depend on their contract.
Back when I lived in Philadelphia, there was a big snowfall the eve of President’s Day. My local newspaper back home had a bit about it and said it hadn’t been a big deal due to being a national holiday. Next time I called home, my brother berated me for not telling them I’d been published! Uh, what? The newspaper had published my email explaining that US “federal holidays” are nothing at all like Spanish government-set holidays, as they only affect federal employees; my own employer had told people to stay home as a safety measure but we weren’t closed at all.
The way it works in Spain is that any government-mandated holiday is supposed to be taken by everybody (kind’a) who works in the territory managed by that government. The kind’a is because there are all sort of exceptions, from emergency services to the restaurants to factories working 24/7. They go to the same level of service as on a Sunday; any industry other than the hospitality industry has a “holiday bonus” payable on Sundays and government-mandated holidays. Companies in the hospitality industry will only have this bonus if they’re pretty large, but then, a lot of smaller restaurants and hotels begin by being family-owned and operated and the person who takes Sundays is almost sure to be a family member.
We have three levels of government-mandated holidays: national, regional and local. In theory that’s also the order in which the governments define which holidays they’ll have; a few times the national government has caused chaos at lower levels by unexpectedly removing a holiday that had been taken for granted (and never was that expresion more apropos).
There’s not much the average Aussie likes so much as a long weekend.
For example we have our national holiday Australia Day, commemorating the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip which arrived on 24th January in Botany Bay. But because they were unable to find fresh water embarked again and sailed a few miles north to Port Jackson (or Sydney Cove) landing on 26 January 1788. So we celebrate the 26th, sort of. The big problem with Australia Day is not because the indigenous population consider it Invasion Day but because sometimes it falls on a weekend. Australian patriotism has clearly defined limits. We can’t miss out on the holiday so we get around this by proclaiming the following Monday as the Australia Day Holiday.
For a long time the quintessential Australian day off work was Melbourne Cup holiday (1st Tuesday in November), yes for a horse race. The great thing is that while Victoria get a public holiday, and the rest of us have a work day, it is by tradition a bugger-all work day with most of the afternoon watching the rest of the card, playing carpet bowls and running sweepstakes for rookie punters, on full pay.
The high point of the Great Australian Long Weekend is now the Victorian public holiday officially gazetted as “The Friday Before Grand Final Day Holiday”. Yep, a day off work so as to prepare for a game of football played on the Saturday.
We maintain high expectations of an Invade New Zealand Day long weekend to fill out the calendar.
Interesting that you ask this right now as today begins 7 days of public holiday in China to celebrate Chinese new year*.
And the government is very serious about this being a holiday – as a non-native, I would be quite happy to work during this week but my employer could get a hefty fine unless they have truly exceptional circumstances requiring anyone to work.
Some businesses, such as in retail can stay open but they must provide I think triple pay. But offices, like where I work, must close.
There are some other weird holidays too, like young people’s day, where everyone below 25 gets a half-day off work.
Oh as a general answer to the OP, I’ve lived in several countries long enough for public holidays to roll around and all of them had at least some mandatory holidays (though many also have “observances”.) If the US has no mandatory holidays…well it’s another example of American “exceptionalism”.
Note however that it is really only three extra days, since 2 of the 7 days are the weekend, and 2 additional weekend days need to be worked as make up days in other weeks (so, how it worked out this year was the whole country had to work 7 days in a row – the Monday 27th Jan to Sunday 3rd Feb. And now we get 7 contiguous days off. But in other years the 2 make up days can be in different weeks).
Yeah it’s confusing.
December 6th (Constitution Day) and 8th (formerly the Immaculate Conception, now “if we remove it we’re going to get killed Day”) are national holidays in Spain. The year they fall on a Tuesday and Thursday gets kind of awkward, because people aren’t sure on exactly which days to “bridge” (take days off between two days off you’ve already been given). The Immaculate Bridge is usually the longest one in the year, we can end up having more days off than for Easter.
Ah, but Navarre Day is December 3rd (feast and death anniversary of St Francis Xavier). Add to the above, you get the Foral Bridge (“foral” is the type of legal system we used to have, and is often used as a quasi-synonym with “navarrese”).
And Navarre’s capital of Pamplona celebrates [del]St. Cernin[/del] Pamplona Day on November 29. So, let’s see, take St Cernin, stick a weekend, add Navarre Day, hop over to St Consti and the Immaculate Conception, and the end result is the ridiculously-long Pamplona Acqueduct (it’s too long to call it a bridge).
Nine years ago, when my first child started school, we used to get a note home saying “Please tell us if you’re going to be away the day before Cup Day (yes, the day that’s NOT an official holiday)” with a sign and return-slip - and about half the kids would be there on the day, and the rest having a nice four-day weekend.
A few years later, they changed this to (paraphrased) - “look, we’re not gonna ask you if you’re sending your kid, nobody returns the damn things anyway, just be aware that we’re not actually TEACHING them anything on the Monday 'cos why bother? Films and board games days for all!”
Last year for the first time, even I didn’t bother sending a kid (I do like to get him out of the house - it’s good for him!) because I polled parents of his six closest friends and ZERO of them were going to be at school that day. I think they get about 10% of the school population turning up, and just get the After School Care people to work the day, like on ACTUAL school holidays.
Yep, and unlike what md2000 described for Canada, public holidays that happen to fall on a weekend in a given year don’t get shifted to a weekday. If Saturday and Sunday aren’t normal workdays for you, then you don’t get to enjoy any time off for that particular public holiday.
I get the impression that this German way of dealing with weekend public holidays is more prevalent among countries than the Canadian way, though I’m happy to be corrected.
