Forgot to mention sick time. With the private firm I worked with, there was no such thing as “sick time.” If you were sick, you called in sick and got paid for it, depending upon your boss. I remember once, when I first began work there, I told my boss I had to drive my brother to the airport as he had to return to his
Army base, so I needed the day off. I got docked. If I had called in sick, I would have been paid. (Somethings you don’t forget.) I learned my lesson: honesty is not the best policy in a working environment.
Federal government employees also get sick hours dependent upon their time in service. This is supposed to be used if you are actually sick, but, of course, it is much abused. (I just never could do that - some compunction about calling in sick when I wasn’t - but I didn’t have that same compunction with the firm if I had to have time off to do something important and I had no annual leave time left.
I do feel sorry for you workers in the US. I am retiring at the end of this year and , for the last year of my employment, I am allowed extra “pre-retirement” leave. This amounts to two extra days a month in this final year, plus the thirty two days ordinary leave. I must add that the company I work for has now changed the rules. For new employees the maximum leave thay can take has been reduced to twenty five days a year There is talk of reducing the leave of the existing workers with a “buy-out” scheme were , for a one off cash payment, the annual leave entitlement will be reduced.
I have not used sick days except for actually being sick. So far. My company took away one of our “personal days” this year, so I may feel a slight cold coming on before Dec 31st.
That may be how the civilian government agencies work, but as UncleBill pointed out earlier the military earns 30 days per year (at a rate of 2.5 days per month) and is allowed to have a maximum of 90 at the beginning of the fiscal year (Oct. 1). It’s possible to have as much as 117.5 days but come the new fiscal year it is chopped back down to 90 (use or lose policy).
My company is a 24/7/365 operation and as such there is no such thing as a holiday off (holidays are our biggest days), nor is there any holiday pay. If you’re scheduled to work, you work. We accrue about 5 days more per year than average to make up for this. If you’re sick you use your accrued vacation time, but after 7 continuous days for an illness you are allowed to take short term disability at a reduced pay rate.
Some other posters have said their is no entitlement from the government for employee time off. While that may be true for paid time off, the Family and Medical Leave Act says differently for unpaid time off. It’s most commonly used for recovery from giving birth and drawn out medical procedures. There is also a government policy about allowing part-time military employees time off to take part in peacetime or combat operations provided they are on orders. The company is supposed to hold their position open for them or give them an equivalent one (pay or grade) upon their return. I’m having trouble finding a link for this policy but I believe it stands for one year from the time the employee deploys.
I’ve one time I’ve received severance pay it was not considered a bonus since it was expected income. Real bonuses, OTOH, are generally not known beforehand how much they’ll be or in some cases when they’ll be paid out, and are therefore not expected income. In every bonus I’ve ever received (including from the government) it has been taxed at a higher lump sum rate than my regular wages (about 45%-50%). AFAIK most employers lump bonuses in with your regular wages on your W-2 just as they would paid time off, although it is taxed at a different rate. I have never known anyone to claim bonuses separately from earned wages on a tax return. The IRS still sees it all as income and on your return you’ll get the difference back anyway.
Severence pay is not “expected income”. Many places don’t even give it to an employee. So it’s a “bonus” in that it is a “gift” from the company for time served.
This is true. Poor choice of words on my part. To the employee, the real-world result is that “They’re taking 50% out for taxes.” The difference will be returned in April, but they’re still taking 50% of the bonus/severence out of the cheque. And they’re doing it at the worst time they can – when the employee needs the extra money!
I don’t know if there are withholding rules that make 50% compulsory, but this is the way it’s always been done at my company.
There may or may not be an option to receive one’s final pay in the form of a regular paycheque – that is, the company would pay him twice a month for the number of weeks in the severence package. This way, the taxes would be withheld at the normal rate instead of the higher rate.
One guy in the office used to work for a large bank. He said that they got three weeks’ pay for every year of their employment, if they were laid off. And they were paid bi-weekly so that fewer taxes were withheld. But that was an exception to the way most companies operate.
The way withholding works means that any extra income in a paycheck is likely to be taxed at a higher rate. Withholding assumes that the amount in a paycheck is the amount that you earn every pay period. Hence if you got, say, $10k severance pay or bonus in a two-weekly paycheck, the system would decide that you are earning $260k plus your normal pay per year. Hence the money gets pushed into a higher tax bracket and so more is withheld.
It is also possible that a company can issue a bonus that doesn’t go through proper withholding calculations. Ours is all done by a payroll company, so it is easy. But a company that does its own payroll may not be geared up to recalculate withholding every time there is a one-off change to the paycheck amount. In that event, they may just decide to withhold a sum that is easy to calculate, and conservative (such as 50%) to make sure they don’t under-withhold.
Well in all the time I’ve worked in/around the Federal Gov it’s always been the same. Leave is earned at 4 hours per pay period, every two weeks, for the first three years. Then 6 hours per pay period from year 3 to year 15 when it goes to 8 per pay period. Sick leave is 4 hours per pay period no matter how long you’ve been in.
Leave is saved at the end of the year until you hit 240 hours. Then you get use or lose. However if you can keep right at 240 and not take a vacation you can have an out right max of 448 hours or 56 days off. I know people who do this and take a month plus at a time. Actually I plan on doing just that next summer. Sick leave is kept no matter how much you have.
This is all for the Feds though. I’ve been companies that give all of 2 sick days and a week off to nothing off. Some companies make you take all of your leave before the end of the year while others do not.
It is hard on the individual worker. On the other hand, working an extra 350 hours a year tends to make your economy strong, which produces a lot of other benefits. One of the (many, complicated) reasons that the US is running things now, as compared to Europe, is that we spend more time working instead of vacationing.
Maybe, although I suspect that’s a very minor contribution to the bigger picture. It is also partly because of this sort of philosophy that much of lazy old Europe isn’t terribly keen on importing the American model of capitalism.
The last time I had a job (instead of doing project-based work, as I do now) my contract was for something like 14 vacation days (that is, if I took a 2-week vacation, only 10 of those days would be vacation days) around 10 holiday holidays and I was supposed to talk with HR about arranging a leave if I needed more than a straight week of being sick.
As many posters have noted, what happens in offices and what happens in the call center is quite different.
I’ve had jobs where I could easily just tell my boss “I’ll be home tomorrow waiting for the roofer, use my cell if you need me” while the folks in the call center had their bathroom breaks timed and could have their pay docked for taking too long. I don’t know that anyone was ever actually docked, but, still.