I get 5 weeks.
In the US.
Thanks to a union.
And I get paid the hours on top of regular pay at the end of the year if I don’t use the vacation. Nobody gives you a second thought if you use your vacation. Zero pressure not to fuck off for a week or more.
Go Union.
My wife got her first pay check last week at her new job in a US school district. I was certain something was wrong when it came in, but the pay stub did nothing to show the breakdown of hours, rate, etc. She finally got a response today - and I’ve learned that school breaks are NOT PTO. She gets zero PTO she can take during the school year, and while frustrating not to be able to choose when you take your time off, I assumed that was just because she gets the summer off. But apparently she gets no PTO AND takes 71 days out of the year off without pay, effectively. So they do you the favor of paying you over 12 months, but you still only get paid for hours worked. The rate of pay seemed like it would be a pay raise on the surface, but I never anticipated needing to dock it by 20%.
Zero PTO. Just the perks of American life.
my wife is an educator, and she teaches summer classes to cover the gap.
Hourly wages for school teachers? I’m worried I might know the response, but does prep work outside school hours, in breaks etc. count as hours worked?
She’s not a teacher, shes in the library. But - she is allowed absolutely zero ot. She’s already had her time card adjusted on days that she worked early or late to match her scheduled hours. And they only pay her for 7 hours a day, but it’s an 8 hour work day and she hasn’t once had the time to take a hour for lunch.
What even IS the recourse when it’s not a comproration, but the government that is stealing your wages? 🤷 I think I’m more upset about it all than she is, because the quality of life is way higher than her last job. And so I’ll just keep it all to myself.
I don’t hate the Europeans for having fair working conditions. I hate the rich assholes that make my home country such a shitty place to live and work in.
It’s time to emulate the french and set the place on fire if they don’t start treating us fair.
T’inquiète* or Ne t’en fais pas* would have been a better translation for Don’t worry/No worries than “Pas grave”
Or you can start with unions…
And how do you think unions come about? Historically it’s by setting things on fire.
Or fires…
The protests and strikes they keep quashing are the alternative to fires, destruction, and violence. It’s a social agreement the factory and warehouse owners want us to have forgotten.
That means not enough fires
I have:
14 fixed holidays.
31 vacation days.
35 hours workweek.
Summertime hours reduction (from 35 to 32 hours).
Fight for it, and force your countries and employers to apply those conditions, because I assure you, they are good.
What’s the name of your employer again?
Seriously, those are really good conditions, I’m glad you are aware of that.
I cheated a little. As I’m employed by a public organization of the Spanish government. But it’s true that we achieved these conditions because we have massive Unions here in the public sector. We are currently threatening with a strike if the remove remote work (as they are threatening to remove it).
Nice, good luck with your fight, remote work is the future
I currently have a paid leave balance of more than 30 days, what should I do with them?
Took 3 weeks of vacation around midsummer, then another two weeks at the end of the summer and I still need to use another week or it will expire.
We are allowed to carry over “only” 5 weeks of PTO.
30 days paid vacation + bank holidays + regional holidays + 0.5 days of vacation each on Christmas and new years eve + generally not having to work on weekends + generally not having to work longer than 8 hours a day + public transport ticket paid by the company.
Cannot complain.
I’m an American working in the u.s. for a company based in Germany. They have soooo many more days off than us. They’re out at least 3 months of the year before taking additional PTO. They like to bring their European values of work to the u s. But unfortunately that doesn’t mean that I get any more off time. I save all year from January to December and if I never took any of it my PTO amounts to 3 weeks. If you’re an American they have different standards for you because american work culture means getting fucked and hating your life lol.
That being said I still feel like the days I get are generous and I am happy and grateful. But that’s only because I used to get nothing at my old job. It’s only crappy if I compare to others which is the thief of joy and whatnot.
The magic word is: Unions. Without them, we would absolutely not have a minimum of 24 days per year by law. Get out there and unionize.
Unfortunately Unions get corrupted easy.
Why is that?
I might be based coming from Norway where we have a very well regulated system with unions on both sides of the table. But I don’t see our unions as something easily corruptable at all.
Because there arent proper checks and balances.
So just like the corporate world and the us government the shitbags get in power and do whatever the hell they want with little to no repercussions.
The teamsters just went through that for years with that shitbag Hoffa jr. He just let the companies do pratically whatever they wanted.
Then you got stewards and shit who dont wanna do anything.
I didnt know any union reps/stewards until I went to managment.
Basically they only care about collecting dues and increasing their numbers.
They union doesn’t ‘demand’ anything beyond paying dues from its members so you’ve got tons of people who really think they can act however they want.
Complete lack of any sort of rules of conduct and no work ethic.
That doesn’t sound like a union at all to me.
Not only european Brazil have paid leave too, and others more democratic countries
Oh god, you don’t want to hear what the average American has to say about Brazil. Or really, any other country than America. Americans will do anything and everything to justify the totalitarianism they live under.
True, I mean the totalitarianism they live on is the first in the history where companies own the country, that’s why they got so mad when Brasil banned twitter, they can’t fathom a company getting punished for breaking the law
is the first in the history where companies own the country
Hum… You need to learn some history.
True, when I wrote I thought about that, but was too lazy to fix
The most prominent example that comes to my mind is Chiquita. Their history is as cruel as it is interesting and it always leaves a bad taste seeing their bananas in my supermarket. Easily one of the most evil companies ever.
I only got 7 a year and I live in Europe…
That’s 7 more than most Americans get
No but jokes aside where are you from so I don’t move there
The average American has 11 vacation days a year.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/pto-statistics/
I have unlimited plus my birthday off, once a quarter we all take off, a week for 4th of July, two weeks for Christmas and new years plus twenty holidays.
This is pretty standard for any job I’ve had.
Unlimited ?
Pretty standard now days. The only limit is I have to get my work done and it can’t be more than 4 weeks at a time. Oddly it can’t be used if you’re sick. You have to use sick time for being sick. That’s only 12 weeks but that’s when disability would kick in.
Wait, so you get “unlimited” paid vacation days? That sounds like complete corporate bullshit to me… Who decideds when/if “work is done” or not? Even if your work isn’t done (there is always more to do), you still deserve vacation/days off.
How many paid vacation days do people take on average a year? How many did you take this year/last year? What happens if your company decides that you have taken too many vacation days this year, will they mention it you want to discuss wages? What happens if someone doesn’t take a minimum number of vacation days a year, will they be forced to take them or will they get praise for being a “hard worker”?
I decide.
On average? 4-8 weeks.
If you had read my comment, you’d see we are forced to take a eeek in July, two weeks for the end of the year and 20 holidays.
I take very little time off. I feel like I’m already off most the time.
I decide.
Oh please, then you could just “decide” to take every other month off and nobody would care, you would get paid the same,etc , you can’t tell me that’s the case…
If you had read my comment, you’d see we are forced to take a eeek in July, two weeks for the end of the year
Right, so 3 weeks vacation and you can’t even decide when to take them. Sounds like a pretty shitty deal to me…
I take very little time off.
It seems that way, yes, so what good does “unlimited vacation” do?
I feel like I’m already off most the time.
Are you a hiring agent or something? What’s next, are you going to tell me that your company is like “a family”?
American. I’m one of the lucky few who have unlimited PTO. I’m seriously underpaid though.
Is that really a thing? I’ve seen it in a few job offers but I have trouble understanding how it works…
As I understand it you can take as many days as you want and it works on the company’s trust, but that system sounds really toxic to me, isn’t it?
Edit: I’m European with almost 7 weeks off a year for context
It’s a lie.
By making it “unlimited” they don’t need to pay you out of you don’t use all of PTO days.
If you use it more than they think you’ve earned you get terminated.
Employees end up afraid of taking their PTO days and typically end up taking even less time off than if they knew there was a expectation of 3 weeks or whatever.
I’ve never experienced it but the somewhat obvious trick is that it turns into a race to the bottom, where if you want to outperform your peers (or even meet the expectations of the company), the number of days off you freely decided to take turns into a KPI.
So, people take even less days off when they are made free to take any amount.
It’s why in Italy, for example, you can not refuse to go to holiday.
I have unlimited and I’ve seen a few people take 2 weeks off consecutively. So it seems like the company is pretty flexible and doesn’t put artificial limitations on it. That said, I’m pretty sure even a month off wouldn’t fix the damage that’s been done to my brain from years stacked upon years of redlining it to write code and solve problems. I find as I get older I need more time off to truly disconnect.
