Federal employees are required to take mandatory vacation - sort of.
Only a certain number of vacation (leave) hours can be carried over from one year to the next, with any excess being lost. Hence the term “use or lose”. It can also be donated to assist other employees who run short due to illness or other calamity.
This once got me into a position where I “had to” leave for the Thanksgiving holiday and not return until after New Years. My boss was less than thrilled. :mad:
When I was working at IBM, they insisted I take vacation. Unfortunately for them, I was working on a number of projects that only I knew how to do, and nobody else on the team was interested in learning how to cover for me. They eventually chained some people to my desk so I could train them, and then I took off for four days. When I got back from vacation, I was four days behind in my work because none of them did a damn thing, and I had to work 20 hours of uncompensated overtime the next week to get caught up.
One of the many reasons why I don’t work for IBM any more.
As a general rule, I get far more vacation time than I use. Last year I only took off one day. I save it up to use as sick leave, and then I don’t get sick.
It is quite common for veteran employees to get more vacation time then they can use. I haven’t taken all I’m entitled to for twenty years. And, yes, I have “use or lose” that I lose every year.
The best job I had for vacations was with the US Department of State. When you’re overseas, not only did you get American holidays off, but also the holidays of the host country, which could be numerous. It allowed us to visit all corners of Portugal, for instance, on the many three day weekends we had. Also while overseas you accrue annual leave. It does carry over, because you can’t always take leave when posted to some shit hole.
You also accrue what is called “home leave”. Home leave is 30 days that you take when you get back from an overseas tour to supposedly reacquaint yourself with America. It can also be accumulated if you take a direct transfer from one posting to the next, or if you need to report to language training or some such before your 30 days is up. I had one boss who had managed to accrue 6 months worth of home leave and an additional two months of annual leave, and the Department was just fine with letting him take eight months off. Your tax dollars at work.
The US Navy has a pretty good leave system. Every year you get 30 days,accrued 2 1/2 days per month, but you have to count weekends as leave days if they fall in the middle of your leave. It is use or lose, but you are allowed to carry over 75 days, more if you were deployed. When I retired i was able to take my last 3 1/2 months off as paid vacation, and I had a job paying just as good a salary after 1 week.
I do. I’m currently in a situation where I am maxed out on how many hours of leave I can carry over from year to year (440). I am permitted to sell back 40 hours once per year.
The problem for me is that my work schedule entitles me to certain premium payments amounting to more than $200/week. Taking a week off work drops me back to base pay for that week, and the loss of the extra money is felt pretty acutely.
One of the few good things about being self employed is getting to take what you want, vacation time. A couple years ago we were debating back and forth wether to do a winter Caribbean vacation or a spring NOLA trip. We went to the Caribbean fairly late in the winter, returned, then went to New Orleans.
If I had the money, I’d do what friends of ours do. They return from vacation and stay home long enough to take care of any routine home chores/maintenance, then they leave on their next vacation.
I’m all for requiring that employees take a certain amount of vacation. That way, there’s a limit to the “anyone here who actually uses the vacation they’re entitled to, looks bad compared to everyone else” sort of game that goes on in some places.
If it’s problematic, even with planning ahead a few months, to schedule 1 or 2 week vacations at a time that works for both employer and employee, then my guess would be that someone isn’t trying very hard to work things out. If you tell your boss now, in mid-March, that you’d like to take the second week of June off, then unless there’s a huge deadline at the end of that week, the answer should be, “sure, go ahead.”
The problem is when you have a use it or lose it vacation policy but the company denies (or for Mrs Cad cancels already approved) vacation plans. Apparently that means you lose it but in her case, the company promised to make it up.
When I worked in the banking industry (in the late 80’s), all employees were required by company policy to take at least five consecutive vacation days per year. If you were out of the office for at least five days for some other reason (jury duty, illness, surgery, etc) that counted as well. I was told the reason for this was it was considered an anti-embezzlement measure, so employees couldn’t cover up their thievery by never taking a day off and thus never letting anyone else cover their desk.
I take very little vacation due to the nature of the business I am in. I am a consultant for a major corporation and I go on assignments at large businesses/governments. I am required to bill a certain number of hours based off of the total amount of work hours in a year. After taking into account required training plus supposed vacation hours it works out to be that I am required to bill on average 31 hours a week for the whole year. However any time I am between assignments counts against me. Which means if during a year I spend more than a couple weeks trying to find my next gig poof there goes my vacation time. Plus we are heavily incentivized to work up to 120% of available hours, our promotions pay increases and bonuses depend on it.
Use or lose policies are often to cap the amount of accrued but unused vacation time the company has to keep on its books. I worked for one company which forced us to take the week of July 4 off in order to burn off vacation and improve the bottom line, which was great since no one else was working and your email didn’t pile up.
Another good reason is to avoid Ethilrist’s situation. Better to find cases where one person knows something earlier than later, though it helps if management pays attention to it. If no one did pay attention, I guess they were screwed when he left. That’s poor management.
In California, “use or lose” is not allowed for vacation time. Employers can cap the amount that can be accrued, but once it’s been accrued it can’t be taken away. When an employee is terminated, all unused vacation must be paid out.
My boss was less than thrilled. :mad: