Not looking too good for me:
2 Years at current company - programming, data analysis, market research related duties.
10 vacation days, 2 floating holidays, 3 personal, 3 sick days, plus major holidays: turkey day, xmas, federal holidays.
4 weeks off a year, plus either 6 at Christmas or 6 at New Year’s (Dec 23-28 or Dec 29-Jan 3). While that sounds good, I guess, we work 80 hour weeks.
Twenty percent of the US workforce is contract labor, and for those folks there are usually no paid vacation days or paid holidays.
I had no idea how much vacation time I get so I went and looked.
(Private sector - communications co.)
These are the holidays:
New Year’s
Martin Luther King Day
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Labor Day Thanksgiving Day
Day after Thanksgiving
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
In addition, there are five weeks that we can use for vacation, family emergency, sick time, etc. It accrues each month, though, so if you want to take like a week or two you have to wait until it adds up.
I’m not sure how much you can save for the following year, but it ain’t much - that’s an issue a lot of our guys have had problems with because some of them had banked a ton, and now you can’t save it anymore.
Same employers as Dinsdale but I’m new in the pond so I could swear I only get about 2 weeks a year that I have to build up, and some amount of sick leave but maybe that adds up to about 24 days a year. I’ve never really thought about it.
But I get all 11 federal holidays.
And I can bank up to 24 hours (3 days) of overtime as “credit hours”.
My co-workers all have the maximum banked leave and usually end up in a use-or-lose.
I think the leave policies I get are absolutely fantastic compared to what I’d get in the private sector for someone with my age and experience. What sucks for me right now is that since my parents live across the country and my sister and brother in law are in Chicago-I’m the one who is forced to fly to see THEM (“there’s one of you! Two of us! We’ll take leave when you come”). I can’t not see them (as in, family is really important to me and they’re all a likeable bunch) so right now I feel like I spend all my vacation visiting family and the same old same old, which is awesome and relaxing but also means that I don’t get to go places like Paris and Italy and really travel, even though I now have the means to pay for stuff like that.
My co-workers are all native Californians and don’t have to use any leave to see family so they all have months worth built up.
My boyfriend is coming to see me in three weeks and we’re doing a whirlwhind tour of California. It is the first proper sight-seeing vacation I’ve had since 2001.
Long time (20 years +) employee of a UK Non Departmental Public Body that generally follows Civil Service practice. I get 30 days Annual Leave + 8 English Public holidays + 2.5 Privilege Days (extra days tacked on afer the Spring and August Public Holidays by my employer according to custom and practice!) + 3 days between Christmas and New Year when the site is closed (but they bumped up our working week to compensate for this bit). I think this would be at the top end of UK leave allowances. When recruiting the leave is one of the few draws we can offer as we normally can’t compete on salary.
A couple of difference I notice from the posts from the other side of the pond - sick leave is entirely separate from Annual Leave (I’m pretty certain an employer has to grant paid sick leave for a certain number of days) and Contract staff must be given 20 days paid leave (but not paid sick leave).
For comparrison, the English Public Holidays are:
New Years Day
Good Friday
Easter Monday
May Day - first Monday in May
Spring Bank Holiday - Last Monday in May
August Bank Holiday - last Monday in August
Christmas Day
Boxing Day
I get 5 weeks vacation (25 days) plus 4 personal days and 12 sick days. We get paid 6 holidays but are given 2 paid “floating holidays” that we can take anytime in the year (because they don’t pay for Good Friday & Easter). If Christmas Eve & New Years Eve fall on a weekday we get paid for those.
We also have a system where for every 40 hours of paid overtime you work, you get an extra day of paid vacation (this is in addition to the time and a half you get paid for the overtime). The reason for that is because we don’t have comp time. Because of this I usually get about an extra week of paid vacation every year.
In 2 years I’ll get another week (total 6) of vacation. That’s the max. Sounds good, but when you’re at a point where you’re paid to be off more than 3 months out of the year is when they start trying to get rid of you. Pension wise I need to retire at 60, not 50.
It depends upon which federal retirement system you are a member.
Federal employees under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) are allowed to add any unused sick leave to their retirement date and increase the retirement annuity. Federal employees employed after 1984(?) come under the less generous Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS), although FERS employees receive dollar matching for 401(k) retirement while CSRS employees do not.
Long term disability insurance is an option to all federal employees. Also, there are credit hours and comp hours (the latter requiring supervisor approval before the fact).
Unless this is very special policy for my agency…I am required to fill out a form for my intention to work credit hours before I do them and get supervisory approval. Afterwards I have to fill out a separate certification detailing the number of hours overtime actually worked-and on those my snoopervisor makes me list the projects I did. I’d post the form numbers but I’m not keen on stating which agency I work for…but for credit hours I definitely need to fill out the paperwork ahead of time, not after. We’re sort of loose about it since this is a chillaxed/zoned out office…but I’d get a “please don’t do that again” if I tried it.
Exempt employee here. We get 22 vacation days. We also get personal time as needed for sickness or appointments or personal days, as long as it’s not excessive.
Non-exempt employees get vacation days depending on tenure and ten personal days. Tenure 1-5 years, 10 days; 5-12 years, 15 days; 12-20 years, 20 days; 20+ years, 25 days.
We get the following holidays:
New Year’s Day
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Thanksgiving Day
Day After Thanksgiving
Christmas Holiday
Christmas Day
And we usually get the days between Christmas and New Year’s off for winter break.
I get 20 days of vacation per year ( which can accumulate up to 240 hrs), 13 sick days ( which I never lose), 12 holidays and 5 personal days ( which expire on my anniversary date)When I retire, some of the sick leave can be used to add service time , and up to 1250 hours will be converted to a monthly credit toward my share of insurance premiums.
15 vacation days, 10 sick days, and 10 holidays.
About six weeks per year. Plus we tend to close for a couple of weeks for Hajj and Ramadan each year.
The OP is more a poll than a general question. So let’s go to IMHO. Moved.
samclem gQ moderator
Four weeks’ annual leave. Unused leave accrues to a maximum of 50 days.
Unlimited (within reason) sick leave.
Nine public holidays in NSW:
- New Year’s Day;
- Australia Day (26 Jan);
- Good Friday;
- Easter Monday;
- Anzac Day (25 Apr);
- Queen’s Birthday (second Monday in June);
- Labour Day (first Monday in October);
- Christmas Day;
- Boxing Day.
Are you sure you mean Credit Hours and not Comp or Overtime? You (should) need approval (and paperwork) for comp or OT, but not for credit hours (you just put them on your timesheet, your boss never need know). But you can only accrue 24 credit hours.
If you’re < 3 yrs you get 4 hrs AL and 4 hrs SL each pay period. SL accrual never changes, but AL goes to 6hrs/pay period for 3-15 yrs service.
Yes, I said credit hours and as I’ve stated multiple times, I’ve worked for the feds since I graduated and I think I know my own billing system seeing as I seem to fill out an endless parade of forms every other day. I don’t know what “overtime” means to you-I’m salaried, not an hourly employee. If you want to work over your 40 hours, it goes into credit hours, and as I stated in my very own post above, you can only build up to 24 (3 days). Credit hours essentially work as overtime for me.
I looked up the forms for my agency-you do need to get pre-approval for credit hours and sign a certification afterwards, which is what I do. The forms seem to be agency specific, and as I said, I don’t want to state which agency I work for.
US, education (private)
25 vacation days, 2 personal days, 14 paid holiday days. Personal days don’t carry over to the next year, up to 2/3 of your vacation can carry but expires the following year. 12 sick days per year, which can accrue forever.
A little sick days anecdote for you. A while back, I heard through the grapevine that an “award” would be given to the person who had the most sick days available, in other words, the person who had used the least sick days. I was very bothered by this – first, let’s not encourage germy people to come to the office in hopes of getting an award, and second, I thought it was dumb to give someone an award for not using a benefit that is part of our compensation package. What, are we going to start giving awards to people who don’t cash their paychecks? I went on a little crusade, talking to my own HR rep in my department, my boss, and the central HR office and crafting lots of Strongly Worded Memos.
I failed to convince anyone of my argument, and the day of the award ceremony came. The winner is … me. I have won the award for using the least sick time.
Apparently everyone thought this was so hysterical while I was going from office to office protesting the award that just about everyone at work was in on the joke and they had been encouraging me to take my complaints even higher. And, they never gave the award again. In retrospect, I do see how funny this was.
15 vacation days, 10 sick days, 10 holidays.
I’m using 5 of the vacation days this week.
15 days of vacation (I finally hit 5 years with my company a few years back). We get 20 days of vacation once we’ve been there 15 years.
6 sick days
1 personal day
the “usual suspects” re: holidays - New Year’s Day, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and the day after, Christmas Day. If any of the holidays fall on a Tuesday, they generally will give us the Monday off as well. If Christmas falls on a Thursday, we generally get the Friday off as well.
VCNJ~