It's legal to have ZERO days off a year?! This feels like a human rights violation somehow
According to this CBS article https://www.cbsnews.com/...
1 in 4 workers don't get any paid vacation time. It's from 2019 but it's not like things have gotten better over there since then.
In theory, vacation time is supposed to be something you negotiate as part of your employment contract. Conservatives believe that market forces will balance out the needs of the worker and the company, as companies with bad employment practices will have trouble finding employees.
In practice, that only works for high-demand positions with a small labor pool. Basically everyone else has no negotiating power because employers have a huge pool to pick from. Conservatives say employees can just go somewhere else to get a better job or go back to school (another topic), but that also doesn't work in when all the available jobs do the same thing.
Basically, it's an extension of rugged individualism. It's up to the individual to take care of themselves. The fact that the landscape in which most people must operate doesn't allow for it is ignored.
Oh the old conservative "I don't care about your rights".
We have a soft version over here that boils down to "everyone can get a job, it's not that hard, just go out and get one" but with 50 unemployed per 8 jobs openings (that doesn't always match but that's another story) that just shows they don't care and don't want to help.
I doubt they have a 7 day work week. That would be unusual. But they probably do have zero PTO. Sick? Come to work or don't get paid. No vacations.
I personally have been at the same company for almost 20 years and have a bunch of banked sick time because I never got sick much. But last year I had to use 8 days because I have a toddler in daycare and I got sick a lot, for the first time in almost 20 years. I got written up. For using my banked sick time for sicknesses.
Double check and see if your state protects the use of your sick time.
In the state I live, there are special protections for using sick time. If they so much as make a comment about it that's a violation. A write up would probably get the business sued by the state.
Oh thanks for the idea. I checked and no, it's Florida and apparently they just wrote a law to prevent even cities from making such a law, ensuring that this lack of protection is uniform across the state.
I will just add this to the pile of reasons I am leaving the state as soon as I can.
I just get paid my normal salary plus 12.5%
Yes, i get more when i take my vacation
If i worked 9 months in a company and quit, i would get it as βferiepengeβ where i can request the money online when i note which days i am taking off.
People in Norway say they have paid vacation, but it's really a forced savings scheme coming out of your paycheck every month. That's why I'm suspicious. Anyway, that's great for you. Denmark is probably the superior Scandinavian nation
Is this the minimum required, or just common?
We have 4 weeks annual leave (not including sick leave and public holidays) and I reckon it's not enough π¦πΊ
Probably because our union movement has been crushed by years of hostile governments and right wing media monopoly.
It's around 5 weeks in the EU, sometimes 4 IIRC. France, where I live it's 5, and if you work more than 35h a week you pile that up for sporadic "vacation" days, last job I had was 37.5h/w and 5w + 11 of those days (the difference is that you might not be allowed to use them as a big ass holiday, but most people use them a bit like that, a bit for the dentist etc).
And the normal holidays of course like 8 of May, IIRC there are like 11.
I get 10 bank holiday a year.
Zero. I can use some of the 7 for holidays.
Well, sort of. The state gives you 56 hours of sick leave, which isn't technically the same as vacation. Mental health, even without diagnosis, is a permitted use. My job didn't give me any grief when I used some of my time to cover the holidays, but I didn't have enough so some days I just didn't get paid. (You acrue time off by working, and I started late in the year)
Oh, and this company also really dragged their feet on answering my questions about it, and told me one rule that's just illegal here. I ended up looking it up myself, and thankfully they didn't push back.
https://www.ny.gov/... if you're morbidly curious.
Edit: they also had the nerve to send out "happy holidays!" Emails wishing me happy and healthy times. No pay, just thoughts and prayers.
Public holidays are not mandatory time off let alone paid in the US. Many employers that give paid time off do include at least some holidays, but which ones and how many is variable between employers. Some will give every federal holiday and others will be only the really big ones like Christmas, thanksgiving, independence day, etc.
One of the most exciting things about the job I currently have is that I get around 15 holiday days a year off, in addition to my normal vacation time. It's a rarity. My last two jobs only had 7 holiday days - that stretch from New years day to Memorial day (end of May) was always brutal.
The American dream is working every day of your life. Literally every day. No sick days. No vacations. Nothing. From the time you are 15 until you are 75. You can even brag about it like itβs some badge of honor. Itβs amazing.
Boomers love playing the work martyr. They've wrapped their entire sense of identity in working, their role at work, and some strange dogged determination that such a way of life has greater value than time spent with their family, children, friends, or pursuing any non-work interests.
And now huge swathes of them have nothing but their grinding mentality, as their family has splintered, their children have gone no-contact, and they have nothing of their Self to fall back on. It's why they still perch on the upper rungs of our political and corporate ladders, punching down at anything they don't understand.
My grandpa didn't understand fiction. He grew up in a company town and was working in the mines after he completed sixth grade (12 years old). It was and is truly sad. He'd say things like why would you bother with that nonsense when someone mentioned watching a movie or reading a book.
After he was forced to retire due to dementia, he drove to the places he worked to talk to the workers about work. He did this every weekday. Dementia progressed, as it does. After far too many fender benders and running out of gas a few times in the middle of nowhere, his wife and daughter had to take the keys. After that he watched TV. He watched mostly the news, fox news and NBC nightly news. Occasionally the history channel. It was "real" so it was all that mattered.
We hardly had anything to talk about. We were politically and religiously opposite. I will say he was a union man and lifelong Democrat, so at least he wouldn't have been down with any of the shit going on these days. I had dropped out of college and didn't get a good paying job until after he died, so I was just a failure.
But. We finally connected when I got him to watch the show Survivorman with Les Stroud. He loved that shit. It was real.
Yup, boomers took the easy way out and drowned themselves in work rather than organize to change the system.
I know this is a hot take but boomers who don't even know how to live without working after they have been on this planet for decades are pathetic, second in blame only to the cruel system that diminished them to shadows of their past selves.
Speaking to boomers here - shut up, turn your TV set to fox news off and take up birding or something else actually real, your work identity is a flimsy illusion of self, you need to actively explore who you are not contract it out to your job you old hateful, childish vampires of humanities' future.
...and yes before the inveitable "not all Boomers!", I know.
They've wrapped their entire sense of identity in working, their role at work
Speaking as an actual boomer, that is true of the men of my generation in particular. Many of them have zero hobbies or interests outside work, to the extent that retirement can kill them through depression. Their wives raised their children and run their social lives for them, and they often don't even have their own friends. So if their wife dies or leaves, they have to get another one or face the emptiness. These same men usually harbour huge resentment against women in general, blame us for ruining everything with our feminist nonsense. I've spent more than 50 years of my adult life dealing with these arseholes. My male friends are mostly much younger.
It used to pay well. People used to buy big houses and earn pensions, and get a new car every 5 years or less.
Man oh fucking man, have times changed. No new cars, no houses at all... We're lucky to get a decent rental that doesn't go up more than $100 a year.
Goods are skyrocketing in price, LLM's are taking jobs away, Healthcare costs are skyrocketing, wages are way, way, WAY below what they should be... I could keep going, but this is enough depressing things in one paragraph.
You don't need a house anyway, they don't want you to work from home any more.
You might be the only person in here that gets this. There's a very deep selfishness to the "American dream". Like crabs in a bucket, you gotta grind to get on top of as many people as possible so that there's less shit raining down from above. If you're lucky you'll have enough society below you that the work you do looks luxurious by comparison.
I've never had a two weeks vacation. I'm 52.. If I have 36 hrs off in one block I go camping.
There are millionaires and billionaires in Europe though, so clearly it is possible to have decent work-life balance and still support the excesses of a rich upper class, assuming that's a requirement.
The amount of productivity lost because of paid leave is almost negligible, study after study has shown that people are less productive the more overworked they are. So staff with no time off work longer hours but are less productive for those hours, the end result is it pretty much equals out. If it didn't, the US economy would be doing better then it is, β¬1 is $1.16.
The exchange rate isn't really the best indicator of the economy because either side can print more or take excess money out of circulation.
Not that your other points are wrong or anything. Just wanted to point that little thing out.
Nah, it's a dumb reason to do anything, much less hand wealth to a bunch of people who don't give a shit about the workers who got them there. It was more tongue in cheek than anything.
Less time off has more to do with middle managers justifying their pittance than anything else.
Studies show programmers are about as productive if they only work 80% compared to 100%. Or so I recall, gotta dig that one up. Personal experience is the more people linger in the office the less (quality) programming gets done.
My take is that people seem to like it, I mean why are they staying late for free otherwise?
What the fuck am I going to do about it? Get arrested bringing the people responsible a lake city quiet pill?
Well what do you have to lose?
The trick is that so much is tied to our employment, including health care. Wanna start a ruckus and get fired? Cool, you'll lose your health insurance and the cancer will kill you. It's not like the company down the street is any better.
Everything. Everything we have.
Let me tell you what it's like to be poor, since it seems you don't understand. The less money and agency you have, the more every little thing counts.
Our families, our pets, our few nice things... They are everything, and they can be taken from us if we slip up just once.

What else can we do? A lot of people underestimate how fucked over us working class folks are here in the US.
The ultra wealthy have been fracking our livelihoods for generations. If we're not hospitalized or crippled by medical debt, we just consider ourselves lucky.
In New Zealand if you have an office job there's a decent chance you're not even allowed to work for at least a week, often two, sometimes three over the Christmas/New Year period.
The days between Christmas and 2 January are not even considered working days when calculating working days in contracts.
I'm an American and luckily I work for a company that does the same thing. We "shut down" during that time. They even give 4 weeks of PTO a year starting off. This is no where near the norm.
Yeah. I know nearly every where else has it so much better. If I felt like I had the ability to immigrate, I probably would.
Cries in working in health care
Sounds like the semiconductor industry. The pay is good, but they will try to destroy your soul during those 11 months.
There's a two week period you basically have to take off, because everyone else is also on holiday, so you couldn't work if you wanted to.
To get a surgery done.
and they're still sending letters...
I had my architect leave for 3 months after he started the transition from AWS to google with full rewrite on the app and re-design of the system.
he did not care at all.
this is Sweden
I used to work in the financial industry where it was mandated for compliance reasons that we take 2 (TWO) solid weeks of vacation. Reason being that if you were doing anything funny like cooking the systems, either people would catch it when they took over your duties or your absence would cause a discrepancy when you were unable to keep up your shenanigans.
I only had 2 (TWO) weeks of vacation. So in an act of mercy the company decided to bend compliance so that I only needed to take one solid week off and the other week was mine to take at another time or split up as needed. You know, rather than give me any more vacation time.
As a european, I simply do not understand how America even acts as if it functions. Shit cost of living, Shit work hours/week, shit vacation time, "benefits" that we see as the bare fucking minimum for us to even show up to an interview, shit healthcare system, shit unemployment system.
Y'all are slaves, but most of you don't even realise it.
Literally everything is a farce, almost every product, every deal and agreement is an inherent ripoff, and there's a catch to everything short of taking a walk in a park.
shit, they towed my car
Manual labor also has its limitations. I used to work in construction, and after my 37 hours my body didn't want to continue. Sure, I've worked more some weeks in an attempt to get roofing done before a period of bad weather, but I'm not convinced I actually did more work than regularly, because I'd just be more tired the following day/week.
Of course, but up until a certain "classic" limit, it's quite linear, right? Like work 2 days get 2 days of work done. Work 3 get 3. Or maybe you'd be as productive in 4 days as a tired person doung 5?
That's the rub though isn't it? Most are fed propaganda and believe it and fuck the rest who actually know this.
About a decade ago I worked a few weeks at ShopKo. Their hours were terrible; they'd make you work 5-9pm to unload the trucks, then make you work 5am-1:30pm the following morning to restock the shelves.
You get exactly 8 hours between shifts making it physically impossible to get 8 hours of sleep. And since the hours were spread so wide throughout the day it was impossible to have a regular sleep schedule. It's legal for companies to do this to their workers in the US.
I was also only paid around $8.50/hr, but that's beside the point.
In a similar vein, my next job was at another retail store. One time I requested a weekend off to help a friend move, but they denied it and instead made me work 7 days in a row, Wednesday through Tuesday. They got away with it because the company's shift tracking app ends the work week on Saturday, so it didn't realize I worked a week straight.
I was paid around $10.50/hr on average there.
In my country most Collective Bargaining Agreements negotiated by unions include a "coming off" day. After a night shift, you are legally required to have a rest period that usually covers the rest of that day and often the next, depending on the rotation cycle
It's sad there's such a disparity between leave amounts at different employers in the USA. It really should be standardized.
I'm from Australia, where it's mandated to get four weeks (20 days) of PTO per year, 20 weeks of paid parental leave, at least a year of unpaid parental leave, and an extra 8 weeks of PTO every 7 years ("long service leave").
I'm living in the USA now, and am fortunate that my employer offers 21 days PTO per year. I also have unlimited sick leave, which is a strange phrase to hear as an Aussie (why would sick days be limited??)
Yeah, it's standard for everyone. Even people working part time get it, pro-rated. For example, if you work 50% of the hours compared to a full-time position, you accrue 50% of the long service leave.
That's pretty cool. Wish Canada would follow a similar mandate.
Here it's federally mandated 10 days of PTO + 8-10 days of holidays depending on province (xmas etc). Above this it's 3 days of paid sick days.
In practice a lot of companies offer 15 days and an extra 5 days per five years of tenure. However this is not federally or provincially mandated and is not something that is transferable if you change companies.
So this is one of those "even things that end up benefitting men is Feminism" things.
Men having no paternity leave, but women having it, might sound like it's better for women. But instead it just makes them more likely to leave the workforce when their maternity leave runs out. Giving men an equivalent (minus medical recovery) amount of leave to be used over the first year makes it so both parents can take turns, get the child to a reasonable point of being able to be put in childcare, and allows both to return to work (if desired). And studies have shown the vast, vast majority of the pay difference between men and women is due to separating from the workforce for years after pregnancy (and subsequent pregnancies).
Paternity Leave is part of Feminism.
3 DAY WEEKEND WOOOO WE'RE DRINKIN 14 BEERS AT CHILIS TONIGHT π π π 
It took me way too long to get the joke.
Yeah I'm American.
I mean I cannot remember the last time I took 36 hours off...
If I work over night (like literally to the morning), I will some time take the next day off, and then have a slow day after :( Most of the time, I only take the morning off.
Hopefully, life will get better, but I don't honestly see an obvious way off...
There is zero reason to give out such little holiday time in the US. Its literally just mean
So how ubiquitous is paid vacation time around the EU? How much could a fast food worker expect to receive if they're working full time?
It'll vary country to country. In the UK (I know we're not in anymore) it's 28 days. France is 30, Italy 32, Estonia 40. I'm not sure if there's any with less than the UK, as we've probably got the closest work culture to the US.
I did use to work somewhere that measured it in hours. So I was entitled to 240 hours. I think it was too make it easier to calculate pro rata holiday for part time staff.
Where I am now I do have the option to take a half day if I want to. Can be nice on a Friday, get to leave before lunch especially if I'm working from home.
My god.
Yeah, UK is pretty shit when you compare it to our European neighbours. Statutory sick pay is a joke too (like Β£90 a week) and maternity (90% of your pay for 6 weeks and drops right down to "187.18 or 90% of your average weekly earnings (whichever is lower) for the next 33 weeks" for only 33 weeks. It's because we keep electing right wing parties. :(
The list doesn't back that up at all. There are loads of countries between the UK and US when you look at the numbers, and the UK isn't inextricably linked to health insurance to hold you captive. If you filter the table by number, US is 6th, UK is 101st.
I'm not understanding what you're saying.
Quote: 'I'm not sure if there's any with less than the UK, as we've probably got the closest work culture to the US.'
I'm saying there are plenty less than the UK and the list shows that, and that the work culture between our countries doesn't seem the same at all.
Keep in mind that in Estonia the 28 days of vacation is calendar days not workdays so with a 5 day workweek you lose 8 of them.
And the 40 listed there includes holidays, usually when talking about vacation time, people don't count that I think. Also if a holiday is on the weekend you don't get a day off on Friday to compensate. You just lose that holiday.
Oh that's interesting. So brings it down to the low 30s like much of the rest of Europe.
That's the idea, the job doesn't matter, only how much you work (half-time, full-time, 4/5, 9/10, ...).
Here in Belgium, for me, full-time is 38 hours. Because 40 hours is easier, that means I get 20 vacation days + 12 days for compensate for the 2 hour surplus each week.
Then there's a few extra days, like when a holiday falls in the weekend, you're allowed to move it.
There's a lot more, but they often require special conditions. You can get days off for education. When you're fired or leaving the job, you can get days off when applying for a new job. There's days when you're getting (or adopting) a baby.
2 weeks? That's like a once a decade vacation.
28 days per year is standard at my company. With 5 working days, that's over 5 weeks. And you are probably taking it when there are already public holidays / long weekends so you only need to use 4 days to get an entire week off.
So it's normal to take 2 weeks long holidays twice a year.
Are you thinking of "vacation" as time off from work, or as an expensive trip to an exciting location?
Whatβs a typical yearly package like for Canadians?
Lol. Its not a package. Its protected by law. Most provinces require employers to allow two weeks minimum. Which isnt a lot tbh.
Thatβs just a legally protected minimum. Whatβs a typical Canadian package like?
People dont use the word 'package' here when referring to work benefits so thats why I was confused. Anyway I dont know because I have a salaried government job. Most people I know in the private sector get between 3-4 weeks paid vacation but I cant say thats the norm for sure. Just look it up if you really want to know.
Yeah this is just the minimum. Most provinces also have a provision that it must be raised after five and then ten years of employment.
I mean even in europe you dont usuqlly go on 2 week vacations. Its like once a year if youre middle class but most people would choose to go on more shorter ones.
In my line of work, anything more than 24 hours feels like a vacation.
Afaik, EU mandates a minimum of 20 days, but yeah, there's deviation between countries.
By law?
I got two weeks off paid, and five days personal time, paid. I hardly ever used it, because when I left for a week or more, and came back I was so unhappy to return, it sort of ruined the short time off. I decided it was better to just stay at a baseline misery, than taste the freedom, only to have it snatched away again. But, also, I didn't have enough money to do anything fun or interesting, in spite of the time being paid.
Join a union if that's a realistic option for you. Your boss hates that idea, so you know it's a good one. The boss' ideas always suck.
Well I am in France and have 5 weeks mandatory; but its unpaid because i have a freelance (=daily) contract
In my country in Europe, I've never seen anything less than 5 weeks paid leave, but I believe 4 weeks is minimum required by law. Oh, plus holidays. In fact, you get paid extra during vacation as a sentiment to actually take that rest and recover some strength. Burnout is a big issue in today's society so the vacation is a national investment.
2 weeks vacation for the whole year isn't enough. Not nearly. π
In Canada you only get 4 weeks after you have worked for the same company/organization for ten years. You only get 3 weeks after 5 years.
Get a new job after 8 years? Start all over with 2 weeks vacation.
Dang. Not moving to Canada then. I thought Canada was almost kind of like the EU with working laws but I guess it's closer to the US in that regard.
That's a terrible system though. It almost forces you to stay with a company once you've started. Gives unbalanced power to the employers over the workers.
Yeah it's pretty shit. My province only recently made it a requirement to provide a minimum of 5 paid sick days to full time staff due to COVID.
Part timers I believe only get 3 / year.
Canada is the middleman for everything on the scale of the States being far to one side of the scale and EU being the opposite side, Canada usually sits somewhere in the middle.
Embedded contract work. A lot of places have seen the benefits of keeping a small labor pool and expanding capacity with contract workers only when needed. It's a lot cheaper to contract a person to work for a year and have them figure out their vacation and benefits than it is to hire an employee you need to keep on. You can terminate the contract at anytime, no severance pay. They need to figure out coverage for their vacation and if they can't it's their problem. Same with them being sick, the contract says they'll find someone to fill that position. If they get injured it doesn't reflect on your insurance. Plus they need the job so they stay on year to year. You can even contract them for less the next year, can't do that to an employee.
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
I work for a shitty big ass company. I get the legal minimum of time off. In new York that's seven days a year. One of my coworkers is in Texas, so she gets zero.
The us is an embarrassment
Edit: and technically that's sick leave, not vacation time. I don't think you need to prove you were sick, and mental health without a diagnosis seems like it's covered, but if you said you wanted to go on a trip they might say that's not allowed.
Highlights for the curious: https://ag.ny.gov/...
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