That would have been the first thing I'd check ... seems standard practice.
Yeah. I mean… I kinda sympathize, but yeah. Vacation days disappearing if they go unused for a year is pretty common.
Does Anon think they were the first person to come up with the extended vacation plan? If no, then wouldn’t it make sense to find out why it wasn’t more widespread?
Standard is for your workplace to force you to take a vacation if you build up to much. It should be illegal to remove your vacation.
They can also pay it out as wage instead at the end of the year. It's the standard practice around here if you accumulate above a certain threshold. Nothing gets lost, except that you pay taxes on wages but not on vacation.
Telling you to use it or lose it is essentially forcing you.
Yeah but theres a huge difference between being forced to use it (and still getting paid vacation) and losing it(no vacation and no pay).
Maybe unpopular but I'm not of the opinion that a business should babysit a grown adult and monitor their PTO and make them take it.
How do you even imagine it? Can you force someone to take their PTO at any time? Or only when they will absolutely lose it? (End of year)
So a company will lose how many days at the end of each year trying to force their staff to take days off?
As long as the employer has any say in, when the PTO is taken, they have a responsibility Period
How do you even imagine it? Can you force someone to take their PTO at any time? Or only when they will absolutely lose it? (End of year)
In my country you have to inform your employee, when their vacation days are about to expire and make measurable efforts to find a vaccination schedule that works for both of you. Or else they don't expire.
So a company will lose how many days at the end of each year trying to force their staff to take days off?
Or you know, you could talk to your employees and work out a schedule over the year, that works for both of you. If you, as a business, are unable to do basic management tasks, then yes you run into the situation, where you are functionally unable to do business at the end of the year.
Not sure where you're from, but it's pretty common here in Australia. I think there are a few things to addresses.
There are two mechanisms a company might make you take leave.
A company shut down period. Eg company is closed over Christmas to new years and requires employees to take a week of leave then.
Over a threshold of leave. Leave won't evaporate at the end of a calendar year, it builds each day and can only be used or paid out. Companies will often have a threshold, for example 8 weeks of leave before they may require you to create a plan to use it, or pay it out. The reason an employer does this is staff leave is a liability on the books. Eg If you make $100k, 8 weeks leave is approprimately a $16k liability for the employer.
I was shocked the first time I had vacation days expire without any kind of notification that I had miscalculated, and there was no payout or anything for the lost hours. I mean, the vacation days are part of the negotiated reimbursement for work. The deal is I give my time doing whatever I’m asked, and in return they give me money and time off. They shouldn’t be able to not give it to me because my napkin math was wrong.
To me it is no different than if you were paid by physical check, and if you didn’t pick up your check fast enough they threw it away and didn’t pay you. If I hadn’t already been radicalized, this would have put me over the edge.
Why would one need to save up vacation days to take a "full paycheck" off? That is one month, so 20 working days? 20 working days should be very common mount of available vacation days per year (at least in EU)?
The European mind cannot comprehend this.
20 working days should be very common mount of available vacation days per year (at least in EU)
Americans:
I probably shouldn’t mention that 20 days is the legal minimum for full-time employment, and that 30 days is the typical amount most people receive. And there are extra days for getting promoted or working 10+ years...
Flexing on us with that parenthetical statement
They didn't notice getting paid out for all of their vacation days?
I'm guessing it was USA and they were just lost.
They just get lost in the UK too, most places seem pretty good about making sure you take them though.
At the first full time job I had in Oz there were a bunch of old dudes who had each accrued over a year in untaken annual leave. The company had to crack down on it and make them start taking it because it was a huge liability, both financially and as a risk to actually getting work done. They had to develop plans for them to take it a couple months at a time.
Yeah this happened to me as a Kiwi living in the UK. First job over there. My boss just let me take them, even though they had all expired.
Gosh, I'm quite shocked at the UK. They are not ally pretty good for workers rights.
The worker in Australia may have accrued long service leave. It's a seperate entitlement that means younger 3 months leave at once,.on top of holiday entitlement, after working somewhere for 10 years.
Older contracts and union deals can be quite good in the UK. I would bet if this company doesn’t have a union that newer employees would be limited in the number of days they can transfer to the next year, likely less than a week.
Took you 4 years to decide to fucking read your contract?
Lol, it'd be nice if they gave you one to read, but that's generally not the case.
I read mine. My boss sent it to me 2 days before I actually started working there, then he let me work there for a week before actually signing, with all benefits being contractually valid from the day I started, not from the day I signed.
If you never saw your contract, get a lawyer.
We have this information but it's usually pamphlets, not a contract you sign. I haven't ever signed a contract for a job. I've signed things, yeah, like NDAs and stuff or an offer letter, but that's it.
What do you sign when you start your job?
Honestly never heard of no contract, what country is this?
In Brazil you have a month of paid vacation for each worked year and you can't work for more that 2 years without using your vacation time. HR would force you to take your vacation time even if you don't want.
as a heads up, if you can save enough money to take a sabbatical, you should. It was the greatest time of my fuckin' life.
I'd love to but all the logistics are overwhelming for me. What made your sabbatical so good? Was it easy to finance?
Was it easy to finance?
I mean... yes and no? I earned about £35k+ per annum between between 2013 ish and 2017 ish, and didn't spend much money on hobbies and such and being frugal. So I was saving money without trying that hard, and figured that about £16k was enough to take a year out to try to learn spanish and slightly change careers, if I spent about £1k a month.
What made your sabbatical so good?
The complete freedom, living on my own, being able to work on daily and long term goals. I lived in a town that was near london, so it was (kinda) cheaper, walkable, 1 h away from london so I could visit from time to time, and had a climbing center nearby.
I took the time to get regular exercise, work on my mental health, learn spanish and just live at my own pace. I even travelled a little (I had a holiday I booked in 2017 for 2018 that I was going on anyway to visit LATAM, and Behold The Arctopus was playing live gigs again for the first time in 5 years, and obviously they were not coming to europe, so I went to NY for like 5ish days (3 days + 1 night + 1 morning). [EDIT : I also returned to my country of origin for a month to save money/drop off sentimental value things/visit family, and en route away from europe I visited Denmark to be with a friend for a week for the last time in ages]
I’d love to but all the logistics are overwhelming for me.
What logicistics are causing you issues? I stayed in the same place I was in while I was working, and all I had to do was quit my job. There's not much to do... oh. You must be from the US? Healthcare? Good luck with that shit.
Know your contract. So many people get burned by what they thought they could do, or what they thought their employer couldn’t do, because they don’t know the rules of their employment. General rule of thumb: if it’s not spelled out in the contract that an employee can do a thing, the employee can’t do it. If it’s not spelled out somewhere that an employer can’t do it, you bet your ass they’re gonna try to do it.
Where dafuq it stacks? AFAIK in most of the world it is either paid out in the end of the year or is wasted and goes nowhere.
California doesn't allow "use it or lose it" vacation policies. Vacation rolls over up to a reasonable amount, which apparently isn't super well defined, but my employers have generally set a limit of 2x annual.
Employed in the US, I can stack up to 240 hours. After that it's use it or lose it, so I just take a few hours off every week.
hours
the US labor rights are so bad they have to measure time off in hours 😭
Not fuck life. Fuck your boss
Both. Both is good.
This doesn't apply in Australia. It accumulates (as does sick leave and long service leave) and if you don't use it you will start to be asked to start taking it after a couple years.
You're a dumbass if you save your vacation days without inquiring if they stack.
That’s something that isn’t even guaranteed by law in Germany. But it’s part of the contract very often (with restrictions like the company can make you take your vacation days and such). So yes, check first before you start „saving“.
Afaik by law vacation days never expire in Germany, except if the employer explicitly tells you they do. So yeah, check your contract. But if the contract doesn't mention it, and you did not get a written warning, your unused vacation days are usable forever.
Pretty sure they have to give you cash for them when they expire
That used to be true, but many companies moved to Personal Time Off(PTO) instead which doesn't have that requirement. Will vary by state and country, but I can confirm in Florida and Gerogia in the US that it's use it or lose it. No payout necessary, even if laid off.
They do not, unless you have an employment contract that says otherwise.
This reminded me of another stupid person who don’t understand how work works.
If you work 6 hours, you get a 30 minute break. 5 minutes for every hour. This new hire who was on a work program as he was unemployed and didn’t study, thought that meant he had 5 minutes every hour and 30 minutes if he worked a 6 hour shift.
So for every hour he went out for a cig, gone for 5-10 minutes and sometimes 15-20. We had to go get him several times. After a few days he was handed a stern talking to, where he would argue for his understanding of the law. He called the boss a dumb bitch for not knowing how it worked. He never came in the following day.
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