Also, how long do you take a holiday/vacation for?
UK. I get about 30 days plus bank holidays, pretty standard at my firm that people push it up to the max. Biggest perk I get is being able to work in between days off remotely, so I can be away for 3 weeks and work 5 days, so it would only cost me 10 days off. Its great for traveling.
Daughter is a teacher at a private school, she gets about 17 weeks or 85 days plus the 1 bank holiday that doesn’t fall inside school holidays. Thats after teacher training days, which are days the teachers have to be at school but the kids do not. I would kill for that allocation, but not the dealing with other peoples kids every day part.
USA. 4 weeks. Gotta love a good union!!!
US, in theory, unlimited PTO, but here’s the problem in the US…
PTO is up to your employer, and while my employer is very generous, my wife’s is not.
So I can’t really take a holiday. I’d LIKE to, I have time available to take, and places I’d like to go, but it’s not like I can tell my wife “Sucks you have to work, anyway, going to Vegas! See you next week!”
Pro top : take lots of pictures while on the vacation to Paris France. Send her the pictures. She’ll be very greatful that you thought of her on your trip. Trust me.
Australia: 20 days PTO by law, 13 public holidays (depends on the state, but no less than 10 which are national), 10 separate days for use when sick or caring for someone who is sick. There’s more entitlements for different scenarios but this is pretty much the baseline.
Murica. 10 days given per year. 10 days taken. Use it for last two weeks of the year
I live in Australia but working remotely for a US tech company.
- Unlimited PTO (company policy) that my boss encourages to take. If I take less than 4 weeks then I get paid (Australian policy)
- Unlimited sick days
- 16 weeks maternity leave at full pay (company policy), or 24 weeks at national minimum wage (~AUD 185/day) for Australian policy. Up to 12 months unpaid
I usually take 6-8 weeks a year of PTO and for maternity leave I’ll take the 16 weeks paid, and 8 extra weeks unpaid/minimum wage (depending on my spouse’s situation)
USA, I usually take a day or two at a time, either when I’m sick or I have a doctor’s appointment.
I get 40 hours of PTO per year and both sick and vacation come from the same pool, sick days count as “points” though and you get 3 points in a 6 month period, exceeding that is termination.
Unpaid time off isn’t an option until you run out of PTO.USA, CA, civil service, IBEW. I’m between 5 and 15 years (different PTO for different service lengths).
15 days vacation, all federal plus 5 floating holidays, and 10 sick days.
It’s 10 days vacation between 1 and 5 years, and 20 after 15.
fuck man that is EMBARRASSING for a union of any sort.
It’s city work.
what does that mean?
literally this week I overheard 2 ladies talking on the bus about getting in with City of Toronto as cleaners, which would be an upgrade. They were both public school cleaners. Talking about how they spend their existing 6 weeks of vacation. One at a school hosting summer school and camps so the work never stops; the other at a school where they are made to take the whole summer off by default.
One mentioned being a 20+ year, the other was a fairly recent hire from the sounds of it. The lifer was committed to the school board, but the junior was obviously really interested in getting in with the City if she could swing it. Because you get MORE with the city. But their hiring process is insane.
CUPE local 79 FTW apparently kicking IBEW ass.
IBEW you gotta change your name. get with the times.
That means there are 20,000 workers from various crafts who all share the same vacation policy. It’s not the type of thing that comes up in department-level union negotiations.
USA, WA, IBEW. Less than 5 years, but ours doesn’t change until 10 years(? I think I need to look this up).
20 days PTO accrual in a year, 2 personal holidays. No sick days.
I believe ours goes up to 28 days/year once at 20years with the company? It takes a lot for us
IBEW bud from the other corner of the country! To be fair, I’m not at 5 years yet, but I get 4 float days, 10 vacation, 7 sick days, unsure what it’s like for normal hourly workers but as a shift worker I work any holidays on my schedule. It’s hilariously bad, I only semi-joke when I say I’d like to go on strike from my own union to make it actually work for me.
Oh, and despite working well over 400 hours of overtime, none of that translates into extra vacation time. Yet corporate is flabbergasted at poor retention rates.
Our shift workers have the option to work on holidays for 2.5x. if the observed holiday is on their rdo they get a banked holiday. If they take it off they get normal 1x holiday pay
USA, tech start-up. “unlimited PTO” and probably about a month’s worth per year. Also full WFH but that’s because of a medical exemption.
While I’m at my desk, I work extremely hard but don’t usually work more than 35ish hours per week as I my brain can’t sustain much more.
I’m in the US
I get 3 weeks of PTO a year and 3 weeks of sick leave
US
My situation is a little fucked up because I work 12 hour shifts, but PTO is based around 8 hour days because that’s what most employees here work and they haven’t made any special exemptions for us. These numbers are going to be based around 8 hour days because I don’t feel like doing the math
Vacation time- 10 days for new hires, and you get 5 additional days at 5, 13, and 19 years, so assuming I stick around for 19+ years I’ll have 25 days. You can carry over up to 15 unused days to the next year
5 personal days, no carryover
Sick days accrue at 1 day per month, so essentially 12, with unlimited carryover,
1 personal holiday
Certain things like perfect attendance, coming in for overtime, etc. can earn you “flex time” which actually is usually awarded in 12 hour increments.
I’m kind of bad at using my PTO. My schedule is kind of wonky and I work less days overall than most people and tend to just slot most of my vacation plans into that. If I plan things right I also only need to take 2 days off to get a whole week, and every other weekend I have a 3 day weekend. I don’t tend to take a lot of elaborate vacations, 3 day or less trips are kind of my norm. Every couple years I’ll do something a bit more elaborate and take a week or more, but more often my PTO tends to get used for other things besides going on vacation. I have a week coming up that I took off to paint some rooms in my house for example.
In the UK, for a university. 26 days + 8 days bank holidays. I’ve been offered the chance of ‘buying’ an extra 10 days (salary sacrifice, spread over the year), I might go for it.
US - unlimited
but is it really unlimited? At my last job, it was “unlimited with manager’s approval”, which basically means as long as the manager approves you’re good to go, no hard limits, but in practice managers wouldn’t approve more than 2-4 weeks (10-20 work days) a year, usually.
There are some things that influence the actual time off:
- I am bonused on my hours billed, so if I’m off more that 6 weeks in a 6 month period, I won’t get my bonus.
- I work from home, so I don’t take as many days off for being sick because I’m not worried about spreading germs.
- I don’t like to make out of office plans, so I take PTO between contracts. If I have a lot of work going on, I take less time off.
Unlimited paid time off? That means you are unemployed and rich?
No, my work just doesn’t like to track PTO.
That’s kind of mysterious, can you elaborate? Are you self-employed or a CEO or something like that?
I am an owner in the business and we have decided that we want to pay for outcomes instead of butts in chairs. I don’t care if everyone leaves at noon if the work is done. And I certainly don’t want to track it.
Interesting, thanks for your frankness!
Midwest US at a large nonprofit with ~10% union workers, ~7 hours PTO accrued per 2 week pay period adds up to just over 184 hours or 23 days, and another 14 holidays. PTO accrued was tiny until 5 years seniority, currently at 13 years and I think it caps at 8@20.
I usually take off as much as I can, about a month per year spread out by 1-2 week stretches for a vacation or just to take care of personal work or projects, moves, family stuff, etc.
France - never got some since i always was in internship/short/seasonal contracts. I have huge free time in unemployment periods though, and some are ‘paid’ by social aids, around 1 week each month if i worked the previous one. The legal basis is 30 days otherwise.