Also, how long do you take a holiday/vacation for?
Ontario, Canada.
Employees with less than five years of employment are entitled to two weeks of vacation time after each 12-month vacation entitlement year. Employees with five or more years of employment are entitled to three weeks of vacation time.
If you read the link you will find the employer is allowed to pay out your vacation time as a % of pay. This is very common especially in lower wage sectors. You are then supposed to save up the money yourself to pay yourself for vacation when you take time off. In effect, you don’t get any paid vacation.
edit: I’ll also add that you have no right to select WHEN you take your vacay. A friend of mine worked in a factory that shut down for 2 weeks in august for maintenance, painting, service the machines etc. So everyone had to take their vacation during that time; no choice. That is unusual but not prohibited.
https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standards-act-0/vacation
9 public holidays
https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standards-act-0/public-holidays
Employees are entitled to up to 3 sick leave days per year once they have worked for an employer for at least 2 consecutive weeks.
This is new since COVID. Which at the time it was introduced, mandated 10 days away from work.
https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standards-act-0/sick-leave
There are also other kinds of leave like parental, bereavement and such, if you click any links you can see that in the sidebar. Nothing is very lush.
Everything is prorated to a 40 hour work week. Breaks don’t count. So if you work 20 hours per week, you are entitled to half of what is specified.
Any employer can offer more than this, of course. Professionals and higher valued workers can get more. Unions or individuals can negotiate. But a lot of people only get the minimum. Or less. Enforcement is minimal. It’s the honor system.
There are also exceptions like federal workers (government, airlines etc). And farm workers, who basically have zero rights of any sort.
Also when they say “weeks” they do not include weekends. You could theoretically take 3 weeks off but you are not paid for weekends. If you did it piecemeal you would have in fact 15 days. 3 sets of 5.
This is what I would expect though? Like if I work a m-f and not weekends, I’d expect to only be paid for the time I would’ve been working.
I agree with you. My problem is with companies saying you get 2 weeks vacation. It’s really 10 days. Just started it in actual days paid. For instance if I take those days off in small chunks of 3 days at a time. I can do that only 3 times with one day left. Not 4 blocks with two more days left. I rarely take an actual week off. I just want it to be clearer.
Canada. Union. IT. Mixed Gov/corp contract.
100% WFH (anywhere, but within the country if you’re on the gov stuff)
22 holiday-days a year. But given the 9x9 fortnight means an extra day off within the paycheque, timed around stats it means 7 weeks.
Generous supplemental medical and dental and vision plan, workday ends precisely at 4:39 and no one expects you to stay a millisecond after; but we stay to either finish or mothball a task so it’s an easier pickup. Evenings and holidays are fucking sacred and you won’t get contacted unless it’s a break-glass all-hands event.
The job is too much fucking Ansible and not enough real work, but I joined because I know the staff and it’s a really great and cohesive team. New openings only when someone retires, and with luck I could end up sailing the world on half pay for life like the guy whose seat at I took over.
US - 0
None at all, no sick, no holiday, no federal holiday, absolutely no PTO. If I don’t go in I simply don’t get paid.
Same and same.
UK, 25 days annual leave which is the standard minimum plus bank holidays
a few years ago, my friend got a remote IT job in the UK (from canada) and the VERY FIRST THING they started with upon hiring was planning the time off in relation to other people. it was so shocking to us, neither of us nor any of our friends had ever heard of this before. Here, people have so little time off that the employer can just coast on everyone working a little harder while their colleague is away a little bit here n there. But when you have people with 6-12 weeks off every year you do start to need to coordinate.
Standard question for any job I’ve had, it’s a position of strength for the new employee as they have to honour them as the dates were confirmed before they joined. If you wait till you are in the door you may not get them as others might already have them booked.
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.
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, 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
Denmark: 30 paid days off per year, paid sick leave, some unknown amount of public holidays. Really enjoying this socialist-democratic hellhole.
Canada, technically unlimited but I generally take 5-6 weeks
UK, 25 days as standard (not including paid bank holidays) plus my employer has the option to buy/sell up to 5 days so I usually buy 5 extra. Also, if you have left over holiday days, you can carry over 5 to the next financial year.
Additionally, the standard legal of 9 months maternity leave.
Also, unlimited paid sick days providing you don’t take the piss; longer than 3 days you should ask for a note from the GP. Longer than 2 weeks you should arrange a meeting to discuss the situation and what (if any) adjustments can be made.
I will also point out that mental conditions must be treated the same as physical conditions so if you need to take a mental health day then you can.
Also my job is very flexible about working arrangements.
The standard is hybrid working, 2 out of 5 days in the office. But depending on what your job is you could be fully WFH or full-time in the office.
If you feel you can only work part-time and your manager agrees then you can.
And the contracted hours are 37.5 per week and flexible start so you must be available between the core hours of 10am to 12pm and from 2pm to 4pm, and as it’s the UK Fridays you can finish at 12. Providing you’ve logged enough hours for the week, if you want to finish early you can or take a longer lunch break to run an errand.
Oh and the cherry on top is the company tries to match annual pay rises with inflation and give a very good reason if they can’t fully match it. That’s not very common in the UK and one of the main reasons, aside from the fact that it’s a nice place to work, why I’ve stayed with them because I don’t feel pressured to move jobs to stop my pay getting eroded by inflation.
Sounds really good!
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.
US, I just got to offer stage with a company and the PTO was 10 days… I’m originally from the UK, and previously worked with startups from other countries, so this is shocking to me. More infuriating was the response from my friend group when I complained about it. “Yeah that’s pretty standard” and I’m like “ok but it’s also shit?”
The Greatest Country On Earth, Pennsylvania.
40 hours
Ireland… 25 days PTO which is standard, minimum is 20 days. Plus public holidays, around 9 or so.
7 days sick leave at full pay, minimum is 5 days paid by gov at standard rate so not matched to your wages.
Usually take a week off on holiday, a few days in a row for school breaks, otherwise random days here and there for stuff.
U.S. (California)
- unlimited vacation time (my boss very much lets me use it too)
- 40 “sick” hours a year
- “ bereavement leave “ (death in family)
- 12 holidays
I will admit I am lucky for being in the US. It most likely helps that I work for one of those evil Silicon Valley tech companies.
Switzerland, 35 days of vacation but that is just the company I work for, usually it is 20-25 days. Also an additional 7 days of national and communal holidays.
I usually go on short vacations, 3-7 days.
20 discretionary, 12 set public, unlimited negotiable, 10 sick days. New Zealand.
