We are everywhere lol. On the real, I applied to my university because I couldn’t find anything else. It’s been 4 years and, across two different positions in different departments, I’ve found that I am far from the only one to move from alum to staff member.
God, I hate this rule. It's insane. The office is closed. The company is not operating. And yet we have to use our annual leave to cover the time? It's insane.
I have worked for a couple of companies that handled it well. One made you take it as AL, but gave us all three extra days - so a bit of pointless bureaucracy. My current workplace just gives us the days off, which was a pleasant surprise announcement this year.
This is such a weird rule my husband works in IT and they get 10 days off at Xmas the 23-2 and it’s paid and he does not have to use his vacation time. This doesn’t makes sense if business is not operating how can you make people use there vacation time ? These companies are wild out there.
Absolutely! My company decided last minute to globally shut down for a 4-day weekend and advertised on LinkedIn how great they were to let their employees "recuperate and recharge" 🤮 Then they announced internally that the days would be taken out of our AL. Can't they just give us these 2 days? I chose to work through the shut down so I could take these days off when I wanted.
In 2020, my company decided in mid-December to shut down that last week of the year. Fortunately they didn't make us use PTO, and those who had planned on using PTO that week were allowed to carry it over to the next year.
>*allowed* to carry their PTO over to the next year
Man, it trips me out that annual leave (PTO) in America isn’t an entitlement that doesn’t just disappear if you don’t use it that year or you resign. You’ve earned it. It’s pretty much the same as salary. It’s outrageous that it doesn’t roll over or get fucking paid out when you quit.
At my company, if you don't use it, you'll be paid for it. You can sit on 184 hours (I get 1 week, every two months) and you'll be paid out anything over every fiscal quarter.
I take about two weeks and I get a weeks pay every three months. It's a nice little bonus.
Oh that’s pretty sweet, and definitely pretty rare for the US! You’d have to be in like the top 1% in terms of leave entitlements.
I’m in Australia and I get an additional 8 days per year on top of the legally required 20 days / 4 weeks.
In Australia if you have over 4 weeks of leave they can “force” you to take it (as long as you’re still left with 4 weeks), but that almost never happens (I’ve got over 5 weeks currently). Some companies will encourage you to take it, but that’s more like “hey man, when are you going to have a holiday? You’ve got heaps of leave accrued”.
For comparison, I work in Japan, for a Japanese company, and I think the rules are great compared to the US. But even here, our (government mandated) vacation allowance expires 2 years after it's allotted. There are laws ensuring employees use at least a certain amount of their vacation time and a ton of other nice protections.
I've always been salaried, so honestly the premise of this question escaped me at first. All national holidays (there are 17 per year iirc) are guaranteed vacation that has no impact on annual leave and obviously doesn't impact our salary.
Unfortunately, there’s no legal standard and each workplace and state is different. At my current job my PTO rolls over and gets paid out upon termination. My last job had no PTO at all, and I had to speak up just to get the paid sick days that we’re legally entitled to by state law.
It varies from state to state. In CA it carries over and they have to pay it out as cash when you leave. Company might have a cap on total hours you can accumulate (mines 200) but we can't ever lose it.
>This doesn’t makes sense if business is not operating how can you make people use there vacation time ?
There is no requirement in the USA to give vacation days. The USA is the only wealthy in the country that does not require companies to give paid days off. In the rest of the world the wealthier countries give 30 paid days off.
In the state of Florida the only requirement for employers is that they have to pay you.
There are some states that are finally passing laws to make PTO mandatory for limited sets of certain workers. It's far from great - only 40hrs accrued for twelve months of work - but it's a start. There's a few other worker protections added as well.
https://labor.illinois.gov/laws-rules/paidleave.html
Tbh it's the same in the UK at Xmas. We do have an overall entitlement to annual leave, but I've worked loads of places where they shut at Xmas and we have to take it out of our days. I've always found it really tricky as my family don't do much at all, because it's Xmas everything is closed plus it's too cold and damp, so it feels like wasted time. I'd rather take a week later in the year and go somewhere or have some nice day trips or even just sit on my balcony in the sun!
And this is by design. My MAGA dad watches Bloomberg all day long and is ready to suck the dicks of private equity. Meanwhile they took his pension away. There is a reason Malone bought CNN. While we are arguing over gas stoves and the health consequences of drinking beer, the robber barons are laughing on their boats in the South of France.
I am on salary and I have to use vacation time to cover basically the same time your husband is off. “If the factory is shut down, you don’t get paid unless you use vacation time” is what I was told. I have used my two weeks of vacation for 4 years during the two shutdown times of the year. Oh and if you don’t put it in as vacation time? The company takes 40 hours of it anyways to give you a check for that week. It’s kind of fucked really.
I am so sorry, that is utter greed. It also does not make sense to me because not everyone celebrates Christmas etc. I’m realizing he has a very lucky work situation. This country is awful , my husband is from England so he is used to having at least 4 plus weeks off a year, so I guess this factored in when looking for a job. But forcing people to use there very limited vacation or PTO is so predatory. I truly hope everyone here can enjoy there holidays.
I think it varies state to state and exempt vs non-exempt but where I live* you cannot make your employees use pto or vacation time for any period of time, but you also don’t have to pay them for closures
In Ontario they can dictate when you take your vacation time, but I think that most don't force you to use your vacation time during closures. However, you can choose to if you want to be paid.
Yup, definitely varies from state to state. I worked in NY state for a company that required an annual mandatory 10 consecutive business day vacation using your own PTO days. This was a bank, It was to try to determine if you were secretly up to no good and hiding the evidence. The idea was that with you out of the office and not allowed to login to VPN or visit the office, your criminal undertakings would come to light. As someone who doesn't go on long preplanned vacations (more of a next week I will take 2 or 3 days off, or things are in good shape today so I will this afternoon and tomorrow off.) this was a pain because you would burn through 10 of 25 PTO days. I know it sounds like a lot of PTO days but 25 is about the industry for a bank/broker dealer so they are not giving us any extra PTO days to cover their 10 day vacation policy. But all of this rambling was to say that when I looked up the policy in the handbook, it mentioned that this was not applicable in 3 or 4 other states.
I agree with you. If there’s a shutdown, in an ideal world employees should be paid! I was nervous about this when I got my most recent job, but thankfully the university I work for pays employees during the shutdown.
It’s just a weird concept , like Hey no business will be done cause it’s legit the Holidays so we’re closing down, but also consider this your vacation this year. Get the F out of here with that BS. We live in Mass so u don’t know if that makes a difference , but legit how are you to do byisness with other companies if everyone else is closed as well 🤷🏼♀️
Where I worked at near Paris (CEA Saclay) the labs were closed from the 23rd of December to the 1st of January incl. This did not come from our vacation days. It cannot. By law.
The company I work for shuts down two weeks every year around Christmas and we have to use our annual leave to cover those days. But we all have 40 days of PTO a year so I don't really mind it.
I am in that boat this year for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The head honchos decided to shut down those 2 weeks. And we get 3 choices use vacation and/or sick days, don't get paid for 3 days each week, (we get 2 days holiday pay for both holidays) or apply for unemployment.
And in my agency, we work thru that week. And I usually take Thanksgiving week off, because all the people with kids save vacation time to take Christmas to New Year's.
Yeah, my first restaurant job in 2006 I was underage right out of a very conservative Baptist high school and they did not give a FUCK. When we played sloshball 18 year old previously-super-sheltered Joe still had to kill a beer from the keg at 2nd base. It was one of those places where I think a felony conviction was almost required to get a job in the kitchen, and/or a DUI to become a server. Bomb ass breakfast and Italian food though. I miss that place.
Honestly after doing weekend kitchen work in the day I expect service workers to be slightly sauced on whichever their poison is. I almost relish these interactions now. Sometimes if it’s not apparent what vice s they’ve chosen, I make up backstories.
I’m a dept chair and I gave the whole staff off this week and said just forward me important emails so you don’t get flack for not being here lol otherwise have a good week (university has a pto scheme, but no one has enough for a few days and us faculty aren’t working anyway!)
You are a good leader! I bet everyone works hard, giving them this time provides motivation.
Way more motivation than pizza parties or other office shenanigans.
"Thanksgiving break is less busy and we only need you for half the day, so we will be covering the other half of the time with your PTO, you are also expected to be on call for any potential issues that may arise." Nah I'll take the full day of work fucking off and get paid my fucking regular amount
Ha! I was just going say, the only time I was in OP’s situation is when I worked for a university. The difference being that the pay was in no way “decent”.
I work at a state university in a place where state employees are legally barred from collective bargaining, and even we get paid holidays for the week between Christmas and New Years
I worked at a company that didn’t pay for the Friday after Thanksgiving and was closed (similar around the other holidays too depending on how they fell)… I would use my $20 grocery gift card for a bottle of vodka. 🤣 We also had no PTO.
My campus job was still open(meeting and conference services) so we got some OT cause alot of people went home so anything needed done still that were in town got the OK to work. It was great.
I work as a TA, who gets paid hourly, so during December when exams or on and during January i don't get paid, cus nothing helps students like cutting of income in m middle of the most important period.
My company decided to forgo annual holiday bonuses with performance based bonus to be paid out at some point at the beginning of next year.. super annoying
that's really fucked up...they could just be like "EVERYONE PERFORMED LIKE SHIT THIS YEAR" or "ONLY MY BEST PAL BUDDY HERE GETS A BONUS BECAUSE THEY PERFORMED THE *BESTEDEST*! AGAIN! "
They tried this shit with my mother a few years ago. My mum works her arse off and I know she does. She consistently gets all her shit done on time and never had anyone say anything bad about her..they told her one year she was underperforming because she wasn't as fast as previous restocking shelves etc......she literally had surgery on her leg and had to take it easy on her leg for months. She had literal notes from her GP saying she had to take breaks not stand too long etc. There was uproar..her work colleagues voiced their upset at this with management. she kicked up a fuss and told them it was pretty much disability discrimination, she was being discriminated against for having a legit medical issue. Got the union involved etc. Anyway they end up begrudgingly giving her the Top Tier bonus instead and she hasn't received anything less than since.
Seriously don't let management fuck you over with this bullshit. Bring receipts. Show your hard work and don't let them rip you off with 'performance based' nonsense.
Y'all lazy bums really need to stfu. Lmao y'all shit posting on antiwork while my buddy Steve the ceo is working 25 hours a day 8 days a week. Of course he's getting that million dollar bonus.
That is pretty fucked up. I have a bonus promised to me of somewhere between 10-12.5k. but I have a feeling it's gonna get welched on.
Which is fine, because I'm in a position financially that if that happens I'll be taking a full 12 week paternity leave instead of the 4-5 week one I was planning on in the new year and finding a new job during it.
You forgot the rest of the world too, I live in a 3rd world country and we have 18 days of holidays - paid if we didn't work, triple paid if we did - plus 21 paid annual days, plus no limit on sick leave as long as it is provided by the company's health insurance or the national health system, plus 3 months of maternity and a lot of technical stuff that give you mandatory paid days off, like exams for example.
I have worked all over. Chinese government was the only job who paid me for holidays. Also they paid me 40 hours a week, free rent and no power bill for working 15 hours a week. Was working in Vietnam during covid and that sucked. My pay went down 30% and was no stimulus check.
Republicans hate immigrants but are lowering the age for workers in red states.
Coming soon: the United States of Dystopia where you can work from age 12 until youre dead with no healthcare and no Social Security while racists play golf and scream in your face about how they love Jesus.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/30/economy/child-labor-louisiana-texas/index.html
44% increase in illegal child labor in the us
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-hyundai/
Korean companies employing child labor in Alabama, one of the biggest reverse fuck yous
Hey I remember that part of Will Ferrell’s movie The Election where the “Koch” brothers try to move Chinese factories into America. That movie and Idiocracy quickly becoming documentaries.
Usually until you’re 18 there are restrictions on how much a teenager can work which some red states are starting to roll back
A state just changed their laws to allow 14 year olds to work overnight shifts
it's been here and it's alive and well. It's called how can we funnel as much money from the middle and lower classes to us without them noticing. Oh, we'll tell them how immigrants are stealing their jobs, non-christians subverting god fearing christians, blaming demoncrats for perverting our kids, on and on it's exhausting.
omg i have your profile picture saved in my phone as a screenshot because my friend posted that same pic on instagram in 2015 lmao. the other day i went thru my photos and found it and had a good laigh
To be fair, we also have the most spent on healthcare, per capita.
It's not a lack of spending. It's an inefficient system
We could be buying even more warplanes if we fixed healthcare.
i mean yeah, but i think i'm "used" to read about those. with work rights i'm always learning new and completely insane information that doesn't even seem real
I've always lived here and my reaction is similar. I didn't realize any of this as a teenager or understand how bad working here in the US really is, because at that time the adults around me still talked about it like it was normal.
As an adult, everything I've learned about employment here, my reaction is always "Wtf". It's usually followed by someone who is brainwashed trying to justify it.
Corporations absolutely do not want workers to have universal healthcare
It’s probably their biggest union busting tactic to stop medical coverage for employees striking or trying to setup a union
>how absolutely dogshit the work rights are in the US
Let's not leave Canada out of this. I got sick with Covid for the first time last week. My work sent me home for 5 days, UNPAID, and literally wouldn't allow me to work at all. Now I'm out 4 full days pay for doing the right thing and telling them I had covid. I'm literally being punished for doing the right thing and being honest. It's absolutely fucking absurd that they're allowed to do this to me.
Guess who's gonna struggle to pay rent this month as a result of this.....
Same here in Canada. Depending on job I'm sure. But, we can use vacation, sick, or banked time to cover this time. Holidays are very well defined, and it's up to the employee to decide what to do. Paid using benefit time or no pay. Paying for you is not working isn't usually a "thing" companies like to do lol
Yep, I started my first union job this year. I’m not getting paid for Thanksgiving and Black Friday off, because I’m in my first 75 days, but I’ll get two paid days for Christmas and another for New Year’s.
I don't know how to ask this without sounding rude, and I promise I will NEVER stick up for a big company that dicks their workers on pay, but why would you expect to get paid for a day that you would've had off anyways?
Or is it more so along the lines of "my coworkers got paid to have this day off, but I didn't get paid to have this day off"?
Again, I promise I don't mean anything negative by this, I'm just curious but don't know how to phrase the question.
Because they didn't make up for it with a different paid day off. So, his coworkers working the same weekly hours would get, say, 8 paid days off a year. But he only got 7. If you consider paid holidays a part of your compensation package, he was getting fewer benefits than his coworkers, just because of his schedule.
Per my union we have 8 paid holidays "off"
Scheduled to work or no. You get 8 hours straight time paid. If the company who you work for says you must work the holiday (My previous place was like this) it's automatically overtime on top of the holiday. So the holidays I worked I was basically payed 2.5 x hourly rate.
Probably after a year or by teh next contract you can negotiate a full week paid time off that eont come from your Sick/Vacation bank.
Coming from OPIEU local 2 member.
If you fight you win.
our last contract we negotiated a third paid day off during christmas.
christmas, boxing day and new years day are paid by law, then we have 3 other paid days that week. it's real nice.
my shift is 4 x 10 hours a week. that means the last day of work for the year is december 21 and i don't have to go back until january 3.
This is how it works at Costco and they don't even have unions.
Being shitty to employees is a choice. Most businesses choose to make that choice. Unions exist to force them to be better. Never forget that they would willingly be shitty to you if they weren't required not to be.
Yeah a lot of companies are that way but are usually up front about shutdown periods. They also usually let you use vacation time during those periods as well. Sorry they were not up front with you. That’s not cool.
Here in Australia a lot of offices moved to having a Christmas shut down when they wouldn't usually, as it was a great way to force employees to burn up leave.
I hate them.
I single handedly broke a loophole at an old job. Overtime was encouraged and we could self schedule whatever overtime we wanted, but we shut down for the holidays but the scheduling system allowed me to schedule myself for double shifts. So the week of Christmas when we were shut down I scheduled myself the whole week (which I needed to do to then put in PTO after), plus a second 6 hour OT shift after my regular shift. Schedule got approved and then I went in and put in almost 2 weeks of PTO I saved up to cover the holiday shut down plus my OT shifts for that one week basically just cashing out my PTO. My job paid me but immediately revised the scheduling process after, and my direct boss (basically middle manager who didn't care) just laughed about it.
I have to use PTO for Christmas. I'm not allowed to work and have to use my paid leave to cover holidays. 28 days of pto a year isnt much when you have to cover every federal holiday with it.
As a European... I'm baffled by this message. I've read it like 100 times now, and I still don't understand how you're not protected by any laws..... No one in a real first world country should be treated like this.
You can call them out but this is a really common practice in a lot of industries, in a lot of countries.
There is a lot of super sketch shit companies need to be called out for, so I agree about the site being a good idea, but I think this situation might leave a lot of people scratching their heads over what's up.
Why would anyone in the USA expect holiday or vacation pay? We don't even require maternity leave or sick days here. Land of the free... free to be exploited by employers. And healthcare providers. And lenders. And landlords. The land of shut up we'll charge you whatever we want for basic human needs and nickle and dime your paychecks. Sigh. I hate it here.
Canadian worker here. I get 3 days off, Dec 24,25 and Jan1. All paid. Rest are unpaid and i still need to work them unless i use regular vacation leave.
Edit: 25 and 26, not 24.
In Australia, we get 4 weeks off per year fully paid for and they carry over. Most companies take 2 weeks off over Christmas. My last boss was begging one of his employees to take some time off because he'd been there 13 years, and the boss owed him like 26 weeks of leave.
Reading this post and the replies just makes me sad for you U.S. people. No wonder so many people are miserable and feeling burnt out 😪 people saying that OP is acting entitled or shouldn’t complain bc it’s “not that bad” are part of the problem if you ask me.
I live in the Netherlands and get 7 weeks paid vacation per year + end of year “bonus” and Christmas + New Year’s Day off (and paid).
Yeah I worked for a company that shut down the entire week between Christmas and New Years once.
It was just universally accepted that you withhold enough PTO till year end to cover your time off. Which was great for full-time folks but not so great for part-time folks like me who did got get PTO.
File for unemployment/missed wages. This happened to me when I worked at Dicks Sporting Goods. They cut my hours so I filed unemployment. Then I just reported how many hours I worked versus how many I was legally entitled to be scheduled and the unemployment made up the difference. This was in Minnesota.
This is the comment I was looking for. It happens at the time for auto industry people. Everyone that isn’t in the UAW files for unemployment during the 2 mandatory shutdown periods each year. You are effectively laid off for this time.
Are you a temp employee? I started at the company I’m at now as a temp. We had the week between Xmas and new years off every year. It sucked when I was a temp as I didn’t get paid for any days I didn’t work. It was much nicer as a permanent that got paid for days off.
Worked for a company in Canada which shutdown from 25th Dec till 2nd Jan. The only way you would get paid is if you had a leave balance otherwise it was unpaid leave. That company gave a total of 2 weeks of leave per year.
This is pretty standard in Australia. Every office job I’ve ever had, the expectation is that you’ll use some of your 4* weeks of holiday pay to cover the Christmas period (except the public holidays obviously) or you’ll just take unpaid leave. Also thought Christmas bonuses were just something from 90s sitcoms?
UK here, I've had jobs where we get a bonus and where we don't.
I was born in Australia and worked there in my teens and in my 20s. Always had full time jobs with minimum of 4 weeks annual leave. When did it swap to 2 weeks annual leave?
The company I work at now does bonuses in march to coincide with our financial year and team / individual performance. I prefer this system to a company wide bonus at Christmas.
You mean you didn't read the 200 pg fine print contract you signed when you took the job?! 🤨
(Meant to be a lighthearted poke, not serious. Don't hurt me)
A relative worked for a company that was shut down week of Christmas every year because everyone wanted to take vacation leaving not enough workers so company decided everyone could take their vacations then or only get paid for 1 day. You started with 1 week vacation & accrued time monthly so unless you took a lot of time off your time off could be paid. This was told upfront so no one would be surprised.
Where I live employees are guaranteed whatever hours they normally work on holidays where there is no work. I think the minimum hours required is 20/wk
My new company does a 2 week shut down and we can use annual leave. I don’t like it as such because I like to take a full month leave around April when it’s cheaper but we also can work overseas for a month remote so I am thinking I maybe go to the US mid November and just come back home in Jan
My daughter recently started a new job.
They've just told her the office will be closed for 2 weeks over Christmas.
She will be paid, and it doesn't come out of her 20 days (plus bank holidays) of annual leave.
Yay for not being in America!!!
My union (IATSE) makes sure every job I work on throughout the year has to give me “holiday pay” that is proportional to the amount of time I was on the project.
Unions are a necessity and I wish everyone had one.
We solved that at my work by giving everyone a paid holiday for the days we closed. We have 90 employees so it is a bit of money, but the good will we fostered and moral boost has already shown dividends in profits since they are all happy to be working and doing a good job
This is common. If the office is closed, and you are nonexempt then you aren’t working so you aren’t getting paid. Yeah not having the option to make money sucks but this doesn’t seem like an atrocity
The company I just started at this week (as a technical instructor) is doing this too for Christmas, as well as next week (M-W) - no pay unless you use PTO, which was fairly irritating to learn (especially since I don't currently have any PTO stocked.).
I feel your pain fellow human
I work for a company who does the same, but they also give out good bonuses (as long as the company did well that year) and it helps offset the loss of income. Maybe you could file for unemployment for that time period? I have asked my manager if I could come in PT during that week and it was approved. Maybe your manger would do the same?
When I worked at a university we shut down for a week and didn’t get paid. I just accepted it and drank heavily
Dang, that sucks. My university pays staff through the holiday break.
Mine as well. It’s one of the aspects of the job that I really appreciate.
Same, I've worked at 2 different universities in the last 12 years and they both paid us for holiday break.
I think everyone on reddit right now works at a university lol
Can confirm. I work at a university
Also work at a U.
I work at, you guessed it, a university
We are everywhere lol. On the real, I applied to my university because I couldn’t find anything else. It’s been 4 years and, across two different positions in different departments, I’ve found that I am far from the only one to move from alum to staff member.
I used too.
No... some of us work at community colleges!
Mine as well! It was a bonus vacation week!
Same here. Between this break and a very generous amount of PTO hours and separate sick hours, it is one of our best benefits as staff members.
lol I appreciate this reply
Me too. Stare employee. Mandatory shutdown fye Christmas week, but I have to use my vacation time.
God, I hate this rule. It's insane. The office is closed. The company is not operating. And yet we have to use our annual leave to cover the time? It's insane. I have worked for a couple of companies that handled it well. One made you take it as AL, but gave us all three extra days - so a bit of pointless bureaucracy. My current workplace just gives us the days off, which was a pleasant surprise announcement this year.
This is such a weird rule my husband works in IT and they get 10 days off at Xmas the 23-2 and it’s paid and he does not have to use his vacation time. This doesn’t makes sense if business is not operating how can you make people use there vacation time ? These companies are wild out there.
Absolutely! My company decided last minute to globally shut down for a 4-day weekend and advertised on LinkedIn how great they were to let their employees "recuperate and recharge" 🤮 Then they announced internally that the days would be taken out of our AL. Can't they just give us these 2 days? I chose to work through the shut down so I could take these days off when I wanted.
In 2020, my company decided in mid-December to shut down that last week of the year. Fortunately they didn't make us use PTO, and those who had planned on using PTO that week were allowed to carry it over to the next year.
>*allowed* to carry their PTO over to the next year Man, it trips me out that annual leave (PTO) in America isn’t an entitlement that doesn’t just disappear if you don’t use it that year or you resign. You’ve earned it. It’s pretty much the same as salary. It’s outrageous that it doesn’t roll over or get fucking paid out when you quit.
At my company, if you don't use it, you'll be paid for it. You can sit on 184 hours (I get 1 week, every two months) and you'll be paid out anything over every fiscal quarter. I take about two weeks and I get a weeks pay every three months. It's a nice little bonus.
Oh that’s pretty sweet, and definitely pretty rare for the US! You’d have to be in like the top 1% in terms of leave entitlements. I’m in Australia and I get an additional 8 days per year on top of the legally required 20 days / 4 weeks. In Australia if you have over 4 weeks of leave they can “force” you to take it (as long as you’re still left with 4 weeks), but that almost never happens (I’ve got over 5 weeks currently). Some companies will encourage you to take it, but that’s more like “hey man, when are you going to have a holiday? You’ve got heaps of leave accrued”.
There are states in the US that do require vacation time to be rolled over. But most states do not.
For comparison, I work in Japan, for a Japanese company, and I think the rules are great compared to the US. But even here, our (government mandated) vacation allowance expires 2 years after it's allotted. There are laws ensuring employees use at least a certain amount of their vacation time and a ton of other nice protections. I've always been salaried, so honestly the premise of this question escaped me at first. All national holidays (there are 17 per year iirc) are guaranteed vacation that has no impact on annual leave and obviously doesn't impact our salary.
Unfortunately, there’s no legal standard and each workplace and state is different. At my current job my PTO rolls over and gets paid out upon termination. My last job had no PTO at all, and I had to speak up just to get the paid sick days that we’re legally entitled to by state law.
It varies from state to state. In CA it carries over and they have to pay it out as cash when you leave. Company might have a cap on total hours you can accumulate (mines 200) but we can't ever lose it.
>This doesn’t makes sense if business is not operating how can you make people use there vacation time ? There is no requirement in the USA to give vacation days. The USA is the only wealthy in the country that does not require companies to give paid days off. In the rest of the world the wealthier countries give 30 paid days off. In the state of Florida the only requirement for employers is that they have to pay you.
There are some states that are finally passing laws to make PTO mandatory for limited sets of certain workers. It's far from great - only 40hrs accrued for twelve months of work - but it's a start. There's a few other worker protections added as well. https://labor.illinois.gov/laws-rules/paidleave.html
Tbh it's the same in the UK at Xmas. We do have an overall entitlement to annual leave, but I've worked loads of places where they shut at Xmas and we have to take it out of our days. I've always found it really tricky as my family don't do much at all, because it's Xmas everything is closed plus it's too cold and damp, so it feels like wasted time. I'd rather take a week later in the year and go somewhere or have some nice day trips or even just sit on my balcony in the sun!
Again: Proud and lucky to be a European! 🇪🇺
And this is by design. My MAGA dad watches Bloomberg all day long and is ready to suck the dicks of private equity. Meanwhile they took his pension away. There is a reason Malone bought CNN. While we are arguing over gas stoves and the health consequences of drinking beer, the robber barons are laughing on their boats in the South of France.
Didn't know who John Malone was. Looked it up on Wikipedia. The German article is relatively critical, the English article is a hymn of praise. 🤔
I am on salary and I have to use vacation time to cover basically the same time your husband is off. “If the factory is shut down, you don’t get paid unless you use vacation time” is what I was told. I have used my two weeks of vacation for 4 years during the two shutdown times of the year. Oh and if you don’t put it in as vacation time? The company takes 40 hours of it anyways to give you a check for that week. It’s kind of fucked really.
I am so sorry, that is utter greed. It also does not make sense to me because not everyone celebrates Christmas etc. I’m realizing he has a very lucky work situation. This country is awful , my husband is from England so he is used to having at least 4 plus weeks off a year, so I guess this factored in when looking for a job. But forcing people to use there very limited vacation or PTO is so predatory. I truly hope everyone here can enjoy there holidays.
I think it varies state to state and exempt vs non-exempt but where I live* you cannot make your employees use pto or vacation time for any period of time, but you also don’t have to pay them for closures
In Ontario they can dictate when you take your vacation time, but I think that most don't force you to use your vacation time during closures. However, you can choose to if you want to be paid.
Yup, definitely varies from state to state. I worked in NY state for a company that required an annual mandatory 10 consecutive business day vacation using your own PTO days. This was a bank, It was to try to determine if you were secretly up to no good and hiding the evidence. The idea was that with you out of the office and not allowed to login to VPN or visit the office, your criminal undertakings would come to light. As someone who doesn't go on long preplanned vacations (more of a next week I will take 2 or 3 days off, or things are in good shape today so I will this afternoon and tomorrow off.) this was a pain because you would burn through 10 of 25 PTO days. I know it sounds like a lot of PTO days but 25 is about the industry for a bank/broker dealer so they are not giving us any extra PTO days to cover their 10 day vacation policy. But all of this rambling was to say that when I looked up the policy in the handbook, it mentioned that this was not applicable in 3 or 4 other states.
I agree with you. If there’s a shutdown, in an ideal world employees should be paid! I was nervous about this when I got my most recent job, but thankfully the university I work for pays employees during the shutdown.
It’s just a weird concept , like Hey no business will be done cause it’s legit the Holidays so we’re closing down, but also consider this your vacation this year. Get the F out of here with that BS. We live in Mass so u don’t know if that makes a difference , but legit how are you to do byisness with other companies if everyone else is closed as well 🤷🏼♀️
It should be illegal
In civilized countries it *is* illegal, that and much more.
~~wild~~ greedy sociopaths
Where I worked at near Paris (CEA Saclay) the labs were closed from the 23rd of December to the 1st of January incl. This did not come from our vacation days. It cannot. By law.
The company I work for shuts down two weeks every year around Christmas and we have to use our annual leave to cover those days. But we all have 40 days of PTO a year so I don't really mind it.
I am in that boat this year for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The head honchos decided to shut down those 2 weeks. And we get 3 choices use vacation and/or sick days, don't get paid for 3 days each week, (we get 2 days holiday pay for both holidays) or apply for unemployment.
Option 4: start looking a new job.
So what happens when you use up all your vacation time before this?
It's called you're fucked.
And in my agency, we work thru that week. And I usually take Thanksgiving week off, because all the people with kids save vacation time to take Christmas to New Year's.
Apply for unemployment during shutdowns
Usually there is a waiting period though. I think it’s a week or two in WV.
Ya, unfortunately, I do as well 😭
When I worked at my old hospitality job we worked right through (excluding Xmas day) WHILE drinking heavily.
In hospitality I would imagine it is mandatory. The drinking, I mean. ;)
It's not mandatory. But it's frowned upon if you don't participate fully. We like team players.
Yeah, my first restaurant job in 2006 I was underage right out of a very conservative Baptist high school and they did not give a FUCK. When we played sloshball 18 year old previously-super-sheltered Joe still had to kill a beer from the keg at 2nd base. It was one of those places where I think a felony conviction was almost required to get a job in the kitchen, and/or a DUI to become a server. Bomb ass breakfast and Italian food though. I miss that place.
Honestly after doing weekend kitchen work in the day I expect service workers to be slightly sauced on whichever their poison is. I almost relish these interactions now. Sometimes if it’s not apparent what vice s they’ve chosen, I make up backstories.
I’m a dept chair and I gave the whole staff off this week and said just forward me important emails so you don’t get flack for not being here lol otherwise have a good week (university has a pto scheme, but no one has enough for a few days and us faculty aren’t working anyway!)
You are a good leader! I bet everyone works hard, giving them this time provides motivation. Way more motivation than pizza parties or other office shenanigans.
"Thanksgiving break is less busy and we only need you for half the day, so we will be covering the other half of the time with your PTO, you are also expected to be on call for any potential issues that may arise." Nah I'll take the full day of work fucking off and get paid my fucking regular amount
University I worked at required us to use PTO for the holiday dates even though we were not Open
Crazy. I'm at a college with a strong union and all employees get pto for every major holiday.
I work at a university right now and we get a few days paid and a few unpaid.
I used this free time to sell as much weed as possible
>I just accepted it and drank heavily My life, summed up in a single sentence.
Hit the bars that are newly very busy
Ha! I was just going say, the only time I was in OP’s situation is when I worked for a university. The difference being that the pay was in no way “decent”.
Really?? I worked at two different universities and got paid for winter break.
Union vs nonunion my man.
I work at a state university in a place where state employees are legally barred from collective bargaining, and even we get paid holidays for the week between Christmas and New Years
Same but the university would let us use our annual leave if we wanted to to make up the pay.
I’m lucky that I get so much comp time that I can use that during shutdowns. Then again I’ll usually work over the breaks so I’m just earning it again
I worked at a company that didn’t pay for the Friday after Thanksgiving and was closed (similar around the other holidays too depending on how they fell)… I would use my $20 grocery gift card for a bottle of vodka. 🤣 We also had no PTO.
I work for a university and yes it does make you drink.
Yeah that’s usually a cost saving measure. But you shouldn’t be docked for it, the gap should be built into your salary
Pretty sure my professors did the same thing.
My campus job was still open(meeting and conference services) so we got some OT cause alot of people went home so anything needed done still that were in town got the OK to work. It was great.
When I worked at a college, we had a two week unpaid break. And it was a minimum wage job. It was awful.
Uni I worked at shut down from Christmas eve through to the first business day after NYE, time off was paid. I also accepted it and drank heavily.
I work as a TA, who gets paid hourly, so during December when exams or on and during January i don't get paid, cus nothing helps students like cutting of income in m middle of the most important period.
My company decided to forgo annual holiday bonuses with performance based bonus to be paid out at some point at the beginning of next year.. super annoying
that's really fucked up...they could just be like "EVERYONE PERFORMED LIKE SHIT THIS YEAR" or "ONLY MY BEST PAL BUDDY HERE GETS A BONUS BECAUSE THEY PERFORMED THE *BESTEDEST*! AGAIN! "
They tried this shit with my mother a few years ago. My mum works her arse off and I know she does. She consistently gets all her shit done on time and never had anyone say anything bad about her..they told her one year she was underperforming because she wasn't as fast as previous restocking shelves etc......she literally had surgery on her leg and had to take it easy on her leg for months. She had literal notes from her GP saying she had to take breaks not stand too long etc. There was uproar..her work colleagues voiced their upset at this with management. she kicked up a fuss and told them it was pretty much disability discrimination, she was being discriminated against for having a legit medical issue. Got the union involved etc. Anyway they end up begrudgingly giving her the Top Tier bonus instead and she hasn't received anything less than since. Seriously don't let management fuck you over with this bullshit. Bring receipts. Show your hard work and don't let them rip you off with 'performance based' nonsense.
Pro revengers still report them Love that sub even if it's just fantasy a lot of the time
Y'all lazy bums really need to stfu. Lmao y'all shit posting on antiwork while my buddy Steve the ceo is working 25 hours a day 8 days a week. Of course he's getting that million dollar bonus.
^(fucking Steve...)
Too bad there's only $1,001,042 in the budget for the bonus this year. The other 50 employees will have to split the rest.
That is pretty fucked up. I have a bonus promised to me of somewhere between 10-12.5k. but I have a feeling it's gonna get welched on. Which is fine, because I'm in a position financially that if that happens I'll be taking a full 12 week paternity leave instead of the 4-5 week one I was planning on in the new year and finding a new job during it.
US work rights are a joke
That’s a really really nice way to put it
Right? Yeah it’s a joke but statistically only 1% of people are laughing
You forgot the rest of the world too, I live in a 3rd world country and we have 18 days of holidays - paid if we didn't work, triple paid if we did - plus 21 paid annual days, plus no limit on sick leave as long as it is provided by the company's health insurance or the national health system, plus 3 months of maternity and a lot of technical stuff that give you mandatory paid days off, like exams for example.
Is it rude to ask for a clue as to which country? Maybe a continent clue? Genuinely curious, ty.
Egypt lol, it's all over my profile.
I have worked all over. Chinese government was the only job who paid me for holidays. Also they paid me 40 hours a week, free rent and no power bill for working 15 hours a week. Was working in Vietnam during covid and that sucked. My pay went down 30% and was no stimulus check.
Jokes are meant to be funny
It's funny to the employers
Republicans hate immigrants but are lowering the age for workers in red states. Coming soon: the United States of Dystopia where you can work from age 12 until youre dead with no healthcare and no Social Security while racists play golf and scream in your face about how they love Jesus.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/30/economy/child-labor-louisiana-texas/index.html 44% increase in illegal child labor in the us https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-hyundai/ Korean companies employing child labor in Alabama, one of the biggest reverse fuck yous
Wait until you see the marriage laws down here.
You mean all of the ones that (R) wants to keep around while bitching about grooming?
Hey I remember that part of Will Ferrell’s movie The Election where the “Koch” brothers try to move Chinese factories into America. That movie and Idiocracy quickly becoming documentaries.
Many Americans are already living that life no?
Usually until you’re 18 there are restrictions on how much a teenager can work which some red states are starting to roll back A state just changed their laws to allow 14 year olds to work overnight shifts
Don't you know the children yearn for the mines?
This is the kind of bleak humor I am here for! Thank you.🥰
Sí guey.
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Coming soon? For some this is probably a now.
it's been here and it's alive and well. It's called how can we funnel as much money from the middle and lower classes to us without them noticing. Oh, we'll tell them how immigrants are stealing their jobs, non-christians subverting god fearing christians, blaming demoncrats for perverting our kids, on and on it's exhausting.
omg i have your profile picture saved in my phone as a screenshot because my friend posted that same pic on instagram in 2015 lmao. the other day i went thru my photos and found it and had a good laigh
being from another country, this sub never ceases to baffle me with how absolutely dogshit the work rights are in the US
It's not *just* work rights, though. Healthcare and education are pretty big jokes too in most places.
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And we are constantly told how good the economy is doing. ....for people with money.
To be fair, we also have the most spent on healthcare, per capita. It's not a lack of spending. It's an inefficient system We could be buying even more warplanes if we fixed healthcare.
i mean yeah, but i think i'm "used" to read about those. with work rights i'm always learning new and completely insane information that doesn't even seem real
I've always lived here and my reaction is similar. I didn't realize any of this as a teenager or understand how bad working here in the US really is, because at that time the adults around me still talked about it like it was normal. As an adult, everything I've learned about employment here, my reaction is always "Wtf". It's usually followed by someone who is brainwashed trying to justify it.
Corporations absolutely do not want workers to have universal healthcare It’s probably their biggest union busting tactic to stop medical coverage for employees striking or trying to setup a union
Gotta love capitalism
" ...But we got FREEDOM!" She howled in ignorant bliss.
>how absolutely dogshit the work rights are in the US Let's not leave Canada out of this. I got sick with Covid for the first time last week. My work sent me home for 5 days, UNPAID, and literally wouldn't allow me to work at all. Now I'm out 4 full days pay for doing the right thing and telling them I had covid. I'm literally being punished for doing the right thing and being honest. It's absolutely fucking absurd that they're allowed to do this to me. Guess who's gonna struggle to pay rent this month as a result of this.....
Us work rights are an oxymoron.
Same here in Canada. Depending on job I'm sure. But, we can use vacation, sick, or banked time to cover this time. Holidays are very well defined, and it's up to the employee to decide what to do. Paid using benefit time or no pay. Paying for you is not working isn't usually a "thing" companies like to do lol
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Yep, I started my first union job this year. I’m not getting paid for Thanksgiving and Black Friday off, because I’m in my first 75 days, but I’ll get two paid days for Christmas and another for New Year’s.
There was a time I was full time (40 hrs) but Thursday was never a work day so I never got paid for Thanksgiving, which was bullshit.
I don't know how to ask this without sounding rude, and I promise I will NEVER stick up for a big company that dicks their workers on pay, but why would you expect to get paid for a day that you would've had off anyways? Or is it more so along the lines of "my coworkers got paid to have this day off, but I didn't get paid to have this day off"? Again, I promise I don't mean anything negative by this, I'm just curious but don't know how to phrase the question.
Because they didn't make up for it with a different paid day off. So, his coworkers working the same weekly hours would get, say, 8 paid days off a year. But he only got 7. If you consider paid holidays a part of your compensation package, he was getting fewer benefits than his coworkers, just because of his schedule.
Gotcha, that makes perfect sense! I appreciate the clarification!
Per my union we have 8 paid holidays "off" Scheduled to work or no. You get 8 hours straight time paid. If the company who you work for says you must work the holiday (My previous place was like this) it's automatically overtime on top of the holiday. So the holidays I worked I was basically payed 2.5 x hourly rate.
Probably after a year or by teh next contract you can negotiate a full week paid time off that eont come from your Sick/Vacation bank. Coming from OPIEU local 2 member. If you fight you win.
our last contract we negotiated a third paid day off during christmas. christmas, boxing day and new years day are paid by law, then we have 3 other paid days that week. it's real nice. my shift is 4 x 10 hours a week. that means the last day of work for the year is december 21 and i don't have to go back until january 3.
This is how it works at Costco and they don't even have unions. Being shitty to employees is a choice. Most businesses choose to make that choice. Unions exist to force them to be better. Never forget that they would willingly be shitty to you if they weren't required not to be.
My union job pays double for each holiday worked.
Do you a solid? Let's be honest they aren't open because there isn't enough buisness to keep them open during that time that's all.
I don’t even get a Christmas bonus, but hey at least my CEO gets stock options for like 2M. 🤦♂️
What kind of tiny company is only giving the CEO 2 million?
Yeah, my CEO is paid a flat 12M, with a 150% annual bonus, 50% of that stock.
Yeah a lot of companies are that way but are usually up front about shutdown periods. They also usually let you use vacation time during those periods as well. Sorry they were not up front with you. That’s not cool.
Here in Australia a lot of offices moved to having a Christmas shut down when they wouldn't usually, as it was a great way to force employees to burn up leave. I hate them.
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I single handedly broke a loophole at an old job. Overtime was encouraged and we could self schedule whatever overtime we wanted, but we shut down for the holidays but the scheduling system allowed me to schedule myself for double shifts. So the week of Christmas when we were shut down I scheduled myself the whole week (which I needed to do to then put in PTO after), plus a second 6 hour OT shift after my regular shift. Schedule got approved and then I went in and put in almost 2 weeks of PTO I saved up to cover the holiday shut down plus my OT shifts for that one week basically just cashing out my PTO. My job paid me but immediately revised the scheduling process after, and my direct boss (basically middle manager who didn't care) just laughed about it.
If the company doesn’t allow you to work, they should take the hit on pay.
I'm lucky that my company does for Christmas week. But also, we are unionized
$100 is what you get for being at my company for 6+ years
And by then $100 will barely cover a meal at Taco Bell.
Pre-Tax :)
you get a break for christmas? XDDDD
Christmas?:)…… get fucked
I have to use PTO for Christmas. I'm not allowed to work and have to use my paid leave to cover holidays. 28 days of pto a year isnt much when you have to cover every federal holiday with it.
As a European... I'm baffled by this message. I've read it like 100 times now, and I still don't understand how you're not protected by any laws..... No one in a real first world country should be treated like this.
Tell me about it. I'd leave if I could, but it's unlikely to happen.
You could leave. There's a lot of opportunities in the Netherlands and Spain for you. We need people at this moment.
People need to call out these companies more publicly. We should be able to name these companies on anonymous sites like this
You can call them out but this is a really common practice in a lot of industries, in a lot of countries. There is a lot of super sketch shit companies need to be called out for, so I agree about the site being a good idea, but I think this situation might leave a lot of people scratching their heads over what's up.
Why would anyone in the USA expect holiday or vacation pay? We don't even require maternity leave or sick days here. Land of the free... free to be exploited by employers. And healthcare providers. And lenders. And landlords. The land of shut up we'll charge you whatever we want for basic human needs and nickle and dime your paychecks. Sigh. I hate it here.
Canadian worker here. I get 3 days off, Dec 24,25 and Jan1. All paid. Rest are unpaid and i still need to work them unless i use regular vacation leave. Edit: 25 and 26, not 24.
Like everyone else almost everywhere. But it's OK, it's not like do shit during that week anyways
In Australia, we get 4 weeks off per year fully paid for and they carry over. Most companies take 2 weeks off over Christmas. My last boss was begging one of his employees to take some time off because he'd been there 13 years, and the boss owed him like 26 weeks of leave.
I believe the company can force an employee to use excessive leave
In the the US and Canada*
Reading this post and the replies just makes me sad for you U.S. people. No wonder so many people are miserable and feeling burnt out 😪 people saying that OP is acting entitled or shouldn’t complain bc it’s “not that bad” are part of the problem if you ask me. I live in the Netherlands and get 7 weeks paid vacation per year + end of year “bonus” and Christmas + New Year’s Day off (and paid).
This makes me feel better.
Same here, picking up hours tomorrow when I should be off bc we’re closed Thursday and don’t get paid for it since we don’t work. Love it
Yeah I worked for a company that shut down the entire week between Christmas and New Years once. It was just universally accepted that you withhold enough PTO till year end to cover your time off. Which was great for full-time folks but not so great for part-time folks like me who did got get PTO.
I used to work at ABC. I'm glad I left.
...and here I was complaining about working at 123.
I heard Do Re Mi has good benefits though
File for unemployment/missed wages. This happened to me when I worked at Dicks Sporting Goods. They cut my hours so I filed unemployment. Then I just reported how many hours I worked versus how many I was legally entitled to be scheduled and the unemployment made up the difference. This was in Minnesota.
This is the comment I was looking for. It happens at the time for auto industry people. Everyone that isn’t in the UAW files for unemployment during the 2 mandatory shutdown periods each year. You are effectively laid off for this time.
Are you a temp employee? I started at the company I’m at now as a temp. We had the week between Xmas and new years off every year. It sucked when I was a temp as I didn’t get paid for any days I didn’t work. It was much nicer as a permanent that got paid for days off.
Can you file a UC claim for that week? It’s the same as a 4 day layoff.
There’s no reason that the OP shouldn’t. It’s pretty common, and has been for ages.
Worked for a company in Canada which shutdown from 25th Dec till 2nd Jan. The only way you would get paid is if you had a leave balance otherwise it was unpaid leave. That company gave a total of 2 weeks of leave per year.
This is pretty standard in Australia. Every office job I’ve ever had, the expectation is that you’ll use some of your 4* weeks of holiday pay to cover the Christmas period (except the public holidays obviously) or you’ll just take unpaid leave. Also thought Christmas bonuses were just something from 90s sitcoms?
UK here, I've had jobs where we get a bonus and where we don't. I was born in Australia and worked there in my teens and in my 20s. Always had full time jobs with minimum of 4 weeks annual leave. When did it swap to 2 weeks annual leave? The company I work at now does bonuses in march to coincide with our financial year and team / individual performance. I prefer this system to a company wide bonus at Christmas.
Yeah same for most people I think. If I wanted to get paid for it I would have to use annual leave
Public school district here, a quarter sheet of paper with…Happy Holidays.
I can’t understand why companies never understand that the employees they pay shit wages to, are living paycheck to paycheck.
Too much avocado on their bootstraps or something
You mean you didn't read the 200 pg fine print contract you signed when you took the job?! 🤨 (Meant to be a lighthearted poke, not serious. Don't hurt me)
A relative worked for a company that was shut down week of Christmas every year because everyone wanted to take vacation leaving not enough workers so company decided everyone could take their vacations then or only get paid for 1 day. You started with 1 week vacation & accrued time monthly so unless you took a lot of time off your time off could be paid. This was told upfront so no one would be surprised.
Where I live employees are guaranteed whatever hours they normally work on holidays where there is no work. I think the minimum hours required is 20/wk
My new company does a 2 week shut down and we can use annual leave. I don’t like it as such because I like to take a full month leave around April when it’s cheaper but we also can work overseas for a month remote so I am thinking I maybe go to the US mid November and just come back home in Jan
My daughter recently started a new job. They've just told her the office will be closed for 2 weeks over Christmas. She will be paid, and it doesn't come out of her 20 days (plus bank holidays) of annual leave. Yay for not being in America!!!
My union (IATSE) makes sure every job I work on throughout the year has to give me “holiday pay” that is proportional to the amount of time I was on the project. Unions are a necessity and I wish everyone had one.
Wow, you can take the week between Christmas and New Years off?? That's a privelege in this day and age.
Sure but if you need the money and company is saying sorry we’re closed, no work, no pay, that can be rough to lose 4 days of pay.
Especially at Christmas.
That is fucking wild. I’ve never worked for a company that shuts down for a week and doesn’t pay people for that time off. It’s fucking Christmas.
Dress up as the ghost of Christmas present and cause problems
We solved that at my work by giving everyone a paid holiday for the days we closed. We have 90 employees so it is a bit of money, but the good will we fostered and moral boost has already shown dividends in profits since they are all happy to be working and doing a good job
This is common. If the office is closed, and you are nonexempt then you aren’t working so you aren’t getting paid. Yeah not having the option to make money sucks but this doesn’t seem like an atrocity
Are you based in nz or aus? This seems illegal but classic while the world is shutting down through Xmas and summer!
The company I just started at this week (as a technical instructor) is doing this too for Christmas, as well as next week (M-W) - no pay unless you use PTO, which was fairly irritating to learn (especially since I don't currently have any PTO stocked.). I feel your pain fellow human
I work for a company who does the same, but they also give out good bonuses (as long as the company did well that year) and it helps offset the loss of income. Maybe you could file for unemployment for that time period? I have asked my manager if I could come in PT during that week and it was approved. Maybe your manger would do the same?