awful delays

[Ryan]

Are you not allowed to carry over that time? I try to carry as much vacation time on the books as possible - you never know when you might need it

I can't speak for all jobs, but when I was a federal employee, our annual (vacation) time was "Use or Lose"! Whatever was not used by January 1 was lost. That's why see many federal employees having vacations in November & December. We could carry over personal (sick) time, but not annual time.

Wow, that really sucks.

Most Feds I know are allowed to carry over 30 days from year to year, everything above that is use or lose. Military folks that were deployed over the course of the year get to carry over more.

 

[amamba]

And some states are so far behind the times too!

The main one I'm thinking of is Rhode Island (surprised?

). Just after I moved to RI in 2000, I took the bus to my (federal) job. Just by chance in late July, I saw a sign in the bus stating when it would operate on holiday schedules. I say January (New Years), Feb (President's Day), May (Memorial Day), July (July 4), etc.. There was one for August also. I thought "What is that?

"

I had to ask my co-workers. It is "Victory Day"! Victory over what?

In the past, it was known as V-J Day, or for those who don't know Victory over Japan Day (from WWII)!

RI is the only state of the 50 US states that still has a holiday for V-J Day!

(It's "only" 65+ years since WWII ended!

) All state offices are closed, but it is one of the biggest shopping days!

BTW - Because I had a federal job, and the bus operated on a holiday schedule, I had to drive the 40 miles to work that day, because the 1st run on the "holiday schedule" did not arrive until almost noon!

I actually think this makes RI quite progressive in terms of holidays - not behind the times. More paid state holidays! I have off from work on Victory Day I would rather that RIPTA offer stronger service on more days of the year, though.

In regards to time off, I have 6 weeks of paid vacation a year but it is also "use it or lose it." Most people don't take all of it because it is impossible to! One week must be taken during March and one week must be taken during the holidays. But I have sooo much time off I really can't complain at all. We also get Fridays off in July & August plus all of our paid holidays (including Victory Day!).

 

[JulieRose]

I work (in the US) for a Canadian company. Everyone there always moans and groans at all the paid holidays they get at our Canadian offices that we have no equivalent to at our US offices. I think they get about 5 or 6 more paid, scheduled holidays a year than we do. Our personal time (5 days/yr) is use it or lose it. The nice thing is, we're allowed to carry over any unused vacation time (10 days/yr to start) until the end of April the following year. If at that time we haven't used it, we get paid out for it.

If you happen to start (like I did) the first week of January, you're advanced all 15 days to use as you wish. If you leave before you've earned them, they take it out of your last paycheck.

 

[JayPea]

We also are allowed five sick days a year. If we don't use them, we get them cashed out at the end of the year. Since I've missed exactly one day of work due to illness in nearly 10 years there, I always get my sick pay cashed out at the end. That extra week's pay comes in very handy, especially for buying 10,000 AGR points. :lol:

 

[JulieRose]

Oh.. forgot about sick days... Sick days are unlimited where I work but they reserve the right to ask for a doctors note for absences longer than 3 days and/or if they think you're taking an excessive amount.

 

[oldtimer]

With great respect and appreciation for those that spend their vacations and holidays riding Amtrak I can tell you that in some departments where they do not have an extra board ( I can speak from personal experience in the mechanical department ) the taking of vacation time is restricted and sometimes even not allowed during peak travel times. It also is the rule that vacations are awarded by seniority it is very rare that someone with children of school age to have a vacation that coincides with the school vacations.

:wacko: :wacko: :wacko:

 

[Anderson]

At the machine shop I own, we've got a "stepped" leave system based on seniority. I forget the steps off-hand, but I think after five years you're getting two weeks' vacation leave and two weeks' sick leave (80 hours of each). Once you get to twenty years, it's 160/80, or up to six weeks of leave (on top of ten paid holidays per year, though we move a few around to allow for more workable holiday schedules at the "big ones")...if combined correctly, that could give you a straight block of leave from Thanksgiving until New Years' some years (just depending how the holidays line up). Mind you, we also allow accrual...which can result in some real accounting nightmares for those employees who don't take vacations (we've had a couple stack up 6 months of leave or more...I think one guy "retired" but stayed on the payroll for a few months to roll out the leave and keep his benefits during an early retirement trip, and someone else once bought a [used] car with cashed-out leave).

I will say that I think what we do (at our business) is more sustainable...there's a limit to how much leave you can dole out at full pay and still have a profitable enterprise in many fields, since you're basically paying your employees for extra weeks of work that they're not doing. Adding in a week of vacation leave to the ten holidays wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'm somewhat iffy about a situation where you give everyone twelve months' pay for ten and a half months' work. We can afford to do this for the 10% of employees we've had for twenty years, but doing that for everyone would put us in the red some years because of lost productivity on top of the added expense of paying people for not being there.

And dax, I hate to say it like this, but Greece is a country that hasn't had their finances in order in a long time. The reason they're in so much trouble is that they can't devalue their way out of the current crisis, but they kept spending like they could.

Edit:

With great respect and appreciation for those that spend their vacations and holidays riding Amtrak I can tell you that in some departments where they do not have an extra board ( I can speak from personal experience in the mechanical department ) the taking of vacation time is restricted and sometimes even not allowed during peak travel times. It also is the rule that vacations are awarded by seniority it is very rare that someone with children of school age to have a vacation that coincides with the school vacations.

:wacko: :wacko: :wacko:

I ran into this on the Capitol Limited last Christmas. Though I ultimately let the matter slide (the staff was overworked, something that was the result of this policy), the train was short-staffed in the diner and about half of the team was brand new. The reason? The Cap's staff tends to be very near the top of the seniority list (the conductors are frequently closing in on retirement) given that it's probably the easiest LD train to work (it has the shortest "deployment time" at about 45 hours WAS-CHI-WAS on the timetable), and so they were able to get off for Christmas, resulting in a bit of shuffling to keep the train properly staffed.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I get something like a month of paid vacation along with a week of paid "personal time" and two weeks of paid sick time per year. There are many various restrictions on when you go and how long you're gone and sometimes even where you go, but in general I'm very happy with what I get. Unfortunately that's about to be cut back drastically next year. I believe the current thinking is something on the order of 50% less paid personal and sick time for starters. Having a mandate would help prevent us from losing what we already gained in the past and without a mandate we can never know in advance what exactly we'll have coming to us in future years. Not to mention that many of the jobs that are slowly coming back after the recession have little or no paid vacation time at all. The fewer protections we're willing to demand the worse things will continue to get.

What bothers me is having the government mandate vacation time.

Any particular reason why?

And dax, I hate to say it like this, but Greece is a country that hasn't had their finances in order in a long time.

Also agreed. However, they still have a long way to go to catch up to the global recession the US unleashed upon the world. Maybe some folks need to read that part about throwing rocks from glass houses again.

 

[Shanghai]

My experience has been that many foreign countries get more holidays than we get in the US.

When I was overseas, my company's policy was we took the local holidays and not the US holidays.

The downside was on foreign holidays that were not celebrated in the US, the US folks would call

me at home not knowing it was indeed a holiday for me. We got Queen's Day, Dragon Boat Day,

Chinese New Year (3 days) Bastile Day and other religious holidays but no Independence Day, Memorial

Day, Thanksgiving, President's Day.

 

[stlouielady]

I work for a company based in Australia, but has offices in the US, Japan, India, Mexico, England, New Zealand, and probably a couple of other countries that I can't remember. We each get the holidays for our specific country. But, on top of that, many of us work in different states, so we also get specific state holidays; for example, the employees based in Nevada get 'Nevada Day' off as a paid holiday.

Our earned days off is pretty simple: one week of PTO after 6 months, two weeks after one year, three weeks after 3 years, 4 weeks after 5 years, etc. I've been there 12 years, and I get 5 weeks a year. Our PTO is for both vacation and/or sick days. We can also carry over 1.5 times what we earn at the end of the year, so, for example, I can carry over 7.5 weeks of unused PTO this year. A pretty sweet deal in my opinion.

 

[TraneMan]

8(24) is almost 8 hours behind! Wondering if it had to take the detour? It don't show RUG and DVL on the status.