I work for a large company (we make airplanes) with good benefits. I’ve worked here a long time and I get a lot of vacation time. The company has a policy of limiting the amount of vacation you can carry over from year to year. Not a problem for me, because I use it about as fast as I get it.
Vacation time is awarded once a year (on my anniversary date) and is based on years of service.
I have, in the dim past, worked part-time and/or temporary and received no vaction time, sometimes not even holiday pay.
I know a lot of you dopers are young (i.e., you can’t remember where you were when Pres. Kennedy was assassinated) and don’t yet have what you would consider career-path employment, but who’s got the best (and worst) vacation systems out there?
Also, you Euro-dopers, if I’ve heard correctly, have practically more vacation time than time on the job. Any truth to that?
Finally, whether paid or not – what are you going to do on your vacation?
I work freelance and set my own schedule pretty much… i do customer service for an ISP
Anyways i choose when and for how long i get vacation… The company adds 12,5% of your paycheck to a vacation account you can cash in every year, so thats how much paid vacation you get… the rest i have to pay myself and i cant afford much for the next many months coz of a recent trip to the states… but im happy with the way it works here
I earn 3 hours of vacation time every two weeks, which comes out to 2 weeks per year. It’s better than anything I have ever had in the past. However, it also counts as sick pay. If I call in sick to work one night, I get 14 hours docked from the time I have saved up. So, I get paid even though I called in sick, but, then I have to work another 2 months to make up for it.
I get a pretty good deal with holiday pay too. If a holiday falls on a night I am normally scheduled to work, I will get paid for 8 hours even if I chose not to work. If I do work, I get 8 hours of pay PLUS time and a half for the hours I work (so if I work 8 hours, I get paid for 16, with 8 of them at time and a half).
Also, since I work a wacky schedule, my vacation looks something like this: I work my usual shift of Fri, Sat, and Sun. Monday I take off for vacation. I am off Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, then actual vacation time kicks on for Fri, Sat, and Sun, and then I head straight into my normal time off again, of Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs. If I save enough vacation time to take the two weeks back to back, instead of a small vacation every six months, I could be off of work for nearly a month. Not too bad.
Well, pluto, you know that you and I have the same sorta jobs (despite the fact that I wasn’t born when Kennedy was assassinated), and I’m with you on being the “I use it as fast as I get it” track.
My company’s policy is based on years of service. The first year you get 10 days, the second year 11 days, the third 12 days, the 4th through 7th year 15 days, 7+ years 20 days. However, when I was originally hired I negotiated 15 days of vacation, so that’s what I get.
We get 2 “personal days” as well.
I used to think that getting paid vacation was the best thing on earth. Now, I’m not so sure. Back when I didn’t have paid vacation, I could take as much time off as I could afford. Once a company has a “vacation policy” I’ve found that it’s just another way to control you. They don’t want you taking any more vacation than you have, even if you offer to take it without pay.
Upcoming vactions include 3 days in Durango, CO for a friend’s wedding, and a whopping 10 days in Hawaii over Thanksgiving. Whoohoo! I can’t wait for that.
On an aside, in my college days, I never understood people who went all-out on vacations. Why would you want to spend several thousand dollars on a week or two in a 5 star hotel, when you could spend a month or two for the same amount of $$ if you’d stay in the cheap hotels? I now know why there’s so many people lounging in those hotels - damn, if I can only get away for a week, I’m going to make sure it’s the most decadent and luxurious vacation I can get. If I had no job, I’d do the looooong vacation thing. Unfortunately, I must work for a living.
Being self employed does not afford you this luxury called paid vacation. However I am lucky that days like today I can get personal stuff done (dog day) with no one harping on me for taking the day off.
I will be taking the entire week off at the end of the month before the Vegas Dopefest but will work more hours the two weeks prior so I am not loosing any pay.
I get 3 weeks of vacation time and am hard-pressed to use it all. I also get 3 personal days and 12 sick days. I can carry-over up to 3 weeks of vacation. This year I’ll probably only carry over a week or so. In 2 more years my vacation time will go up to 4 weeks, if I’m still in this hell-hole.
Where I work we get something called “Personal Time Off” or PTO.
This is vacation time and sick days rolled into one. It allows someone to have up to XX (25 for me) sick days a year, which is a lot. Conversely, if you don’t get sick you get XX days of vacation.
This is a new system for us (my company just went through a merger) and it was a bit of a ripoff for long-time employees as they lost all of their accumulated sick-time.
We can carry up to 5 days of PTO into the next year, but they must be used by the end of the first quarter. Also, there is an option to sell PTO at the beginning of the year. This is a little problematic under this system because you may know you will only take 2 weeks of vacation, but you can’t predict how much sick time you will need.
Additionally, being a financial institution the OCC requires all employees of certain business lines to take two consecutive weeks of vacation per year (the assumption being that it is harder to commit frauds that can survive a two week absense, and someone else will have to see your books for that time). Fortunately, I am no longer in one of those business lines. Two consecutive weeks of vacation would likely drive me nuts.
But all in all this is a very good system for me as I’m only sick about 1.5 to 2 days a year. How many other places would I be getting 5 weeks of vacation per year after only two years of employment?
I get a little over 4 hours every two weeks. It adds up, but the catch is that these are all-purpose days off, so you have to use them for sick days too. We also get all the government holidays.
I managed to save up almost a month before my son was born, which was a good thing because the 6-week “Family Leave” is unpaid. (One of those wonderful perks people with no children think we get. Wow. I can still have my job when I get back. Yes–but why do you think I have a job in the first place?)
Where I work, I get (1) week vacation after being with the company for a year, (2) weeks after being with them for three years, (3) weeks after being with them for 5 years, (4) weeks after ten years, (5) weeks after 20 years, and (6) weeks after 25 years. And the weeks can be carried over into the next year if not taken the previous year.
I get:
-4 weeks/yr. vacation, but have never used more than 3. The rest is lost.
-10 sick/personal days which I almost never use. The unused days convert to long term disablity days at year end.
-11 paid holidays
I get twenty days of vacation a year, plus ten personal/sick days, too. I also have to work weekends occasionally, and I take comp days to make up for it.
I’ve used five days so far this year to go to Sicily, and one to take a long weekend in D.C. and the Eastern shore of Virginia. I’m taking five or six more at the end of the month to go to Maine, and I’ll probably sprinkle the remainder around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Pluto, if you’re not too busy with anything else this weekend, could you take a couple hours and make me just a little airplane?
Our vacation and sick time is lumped into one category called “flex time off” or FTO. I get 5.54 hours every two weeks. (Why they don’t just round it to 6 hours is beyond me…) Works out to 144 hours and change, or 3 weeks and 3 days.
I can carry over up to 300 hours of FTO per year; anything over that is lost.
The accrual is based on a sliding scale. I just hit my five-year anniversary; after the 6th year I’ll accrue 6.46 hours every two weeks (168ish hours/year), and I’ll be able to carry over 400 hours per year.
I haven’t had a “vacation” (whole week off) since 1994, and not because it wasn’t available to me, but my boss was a workaholic and expected me to be too.
When I started with my new company, it was my job to set up company policies so I have made it standard for all salary employees to have 80 hours personal/sick and 80 hours vacation. So far this year I have taken 3.5 days off.
I leave on a real vacation in exactly 12 days for four days in Cape Cod and then two days to Newport, RI, as a side trip (just the gals; the guys are flying back to Florida without us). Fun, Fun.
Mr. Golf has also planned a NYC mini-vacation for us, Sept. 15-19, with a side trip to Cape Cod (to golf, imagine that).
AND, we are going to Cancun in October for four days, although we will be taking 6 of Mr. Golf’s employees and their spouses with us so I don’t consider that a real vacation.
currently gain about 4 hours vacation leave per week. (been here since the dark ages). also get 3.68 sick hours per 2 week pay period
currently have : 8 weeks vacation leave :eek:
and some 14 weeks sick leave :eek: on the books.
sick leave only gets paid out if I use it, vacation gets paid out if I die/quit etc.
last time I took any real time off??? does the time between Christmas and New Years count?/??? No???
then it was about 4 years ago.
I was getting 3 weeks vacation a year, since I have no life I didn’t use it, next month I get 4 more weeks, still no life, so I take fridays off which works well for me.
should use vacation time to find that disk
I think the union jobs tend to provide better holiday and vacation packages, but of course I’m generalizing.
When I worked for a public university, we were under collective bargaining. We got 21 days off per year, plus about 15 holidays a year. This did not take into account the extra 21 days of sick leave we got to accumulate as well.
I believe you were allowed to accumulate up to 1,000 hours (25 weeks) of vacation time before it stopped accruing. One of the clerks who worked in my office had built up almost to that 1,000-hour mark, and would continue to shave her earned vacation time with shorter vacations. She told me she wanted to retire a half year early. I asked her how she accumulated so much; she said for a long time she’d only take a week or two off a year.
At my current job, it’s the standard two weeks a year for the first couple of years, after which it grows to three. In addition, every five years we are given a six-week paid sabbatical in which we can take off and do what we want (unlike a college sabbatical, where you are expected to conduct research). Some of my peers tack the vacation time on it, and take two whole months off to travel overseas. Hey – it’s one of the perks of working in high-tech.
The company I work at gives a certain # of weeks depending on years of services (I get 3), 10 paid holidays (8 fixed and 2 “personal” holidays) and 5 sick days. You earn vacation hours monthly but, if you wanted (and got it approved) you could take all your vacation time in January…you just have to pay back any unearned vacation time if you leave the company.
Both vacation and sick time used to carry over indefinitely, but now they have a “use it or lose it” policy, except that any sick time accumulated from before the policy was implemented carries over until it gets used up.
Germany is quite humane: 6 weeks paid vacation per year, from the word “go”. I haven’t counted the holidays, but 10-12 sounds about right to me.
Officially, you’re not supposed to move vacation weeks from one year to another, but you can generally speaking work something out.
Sick leave is considered an entirely different thing - if you’re sick, you’re expected to stay the fuck away until you’ve recovered. There is, however, an upper limit to the sick days you can have in any given year - I believe it’s 120 days - and when you cross that line, your employer is entitled to cancel your contract for no other reason. But there’s no cross-over at all between sick leave and vacation - and there shouldn’t be, in my opinion.
Officially, there’s a lot of other rules - you’re not supposed to work more than 10 hours per day, you’re entitled to 11 hours of free time between two work periods etc. etc., but those are generally speaking ignored when necessary.
Oh, and Skümmet: I’m surprised that you approve of the Danish system with the vacation account. I consider it a most annoying, bureaucratic and patronizing practice, kept in place only because unions & employers alike make an earning of it. It’s not in the interest of the employees, that’s a fact.
Having committed the atrocious crime of travelling abroad, I now have to submit a request for dispensation to the Vacation Law Office to get hold of those 12,5% - and whatever interest has accrued since I earned the money is confiscated. Of course, if I don’t claim the money, it gets confiscated as well - so there’s no motivation anywhere for making it easier for the employees to get what is, after all, their own money. :mad:
Lsura sighs and remembers the days of vacation time
My last job had fantastic vacation benefits. I had been there for 4 years, and was up to 4 weeks a year(and this is in the US), plus personal time could be taken as necessary, and flex hours. Unfortunately, what with having been laid off, I received that in a check for the current year, and started a new job. No vacation for me until next June, and then I only have 2 weeks. I guess I’ll survive…but starting on the low end of the totem pole bites sometimes…especially when all your co-workers are discussing vacation plans.
-Lsura
also get 3.68 sick hours per 2 week pay period 
