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With the US is it the vacation rules are mostly not required. Many states have different rules, and the more conservative the state, the more anti worker the rules are.
And all the jobs I've worked, I've never seen any pushback for taking vacation. But that's because I work in a white collar industry that is competitive and I can find another job if I wanted to. The less skilled you are, and the lower the opportunities are in the industries around you, the more opportunity exists for shitty employers.
The interesting thing is, that I currently work for a Scottish company, and their vacation rules are worse than mine because I am guided by California labor laws, and they're under shitty UK labor laws.
Whats shitty about UK labour laws vs californian?
The main difference from a vacation standpoint is that the vacation days are allocated per calendar year, and must all be used in that calendar year. You're given x amount on January 1st and they must all be used by December 31st.
In California, vacation days are treated as an accruing asset. They can't reset my vacation days at the turnover of a calendar year . The vacation hours build up over time. This means there's not an end of the year rush to use vacation days, there is no use it or lose it, and if I'm ever laid off the company has to pay me for all the vacation days I've accrued. The California system is a much better system than the one the employees have in Scotland.
I think that may be a company policy rather than a legal policy. I work for a scottish company in scotland where I am a union rep. My holiday year follows the financial year (april 1 - march 31st) and secondly I do not lose holiday hours that I don't take - that would be wage theft. In theory I can rollover holidays indefinitely but if I worked for a company that did not allow this, the company in question would effectively have to buy any unspent holiday hours from me. There is no use it or lose it, theres use it for time off or be paid for it.
Out of curioisity how many holiday days do you get per year?
It's absolutely a company policy, but in California it's not legal to have a policy like that. The whole idea that you must use all your holidays every calendar year is stupid. Having a policy where if you haven't used all your vacation days by December 31st, you lose it, is stupid.
That would be stupid I agree, but also not how it works in the UK or California either - according to CAs labour law website, the law there regarding holiday/vacation accrual is no different than the UK:
"California law does not permit "use it or lose it" vacation policies. Vacation accruals may be capped, but may not be forfeited. Therefore, unused, accrued vacation must be paid out at the end of employment"
Since you didn't answer my last question I looked it up, California has no legal minimum number of vacation days? That's grim as fuck and completely shoots down your "California labour laws are better than UK" where the legal minimum number of vacation days is 28 per year.
I say minimum because almost no employer here offers the minimum (who would want to work for someone offering 4 weeks of holiday when other employers offer 5 or 6? Shit man last year I ended up with slightly more than 7 weeks off.
Since I was looking into it, I noticed a number of ways that California labour laws are inferior to the ones I enjoy:
- theres no minimim number of hours before I am legally entitled to overtime, anything over my contracted 35 hours is paid as overtime (and any overtime is completely voluntary)
- 28 weeks of paid sick leave
- no "at will" employment, I cannot be terminated for no reason
I'm sure there are more but I've seen enough now to convince me that the labour laws in CA are hugely inferior to those in the UK.
The US tends to suck for many things worker related, I wasn't arguing about all the different policies. However, I double checked, all our Scottish employees have a "use it or lose it" rule on vacation days. They must use all their vacation days per calendar year. They get their vacation days on Jan 1st and if they don't use them by Dec 31st, they lose them. This is also the model the other employees have in the US, with the exception of the two of use who live in California where that type of policy is illegal.
Since you must know, I get 20 days of vacation a year plus all federal holidays (11 days). I don't get sick days, they come out of my vacation days. However I'm a high value employee and you're comparing me against the blue collar workers in Scotland. I believe they get either 15 or 20 vacation days per year and I don't really know about their sick day program. I hate the calendar "use it or lose it" vacation day plan and I think the California rules are much better.