In many parts of Europe, it’s common for workers to take off weeks at a time, especially during the summer. Envious Americans say it’s time for the U.S. to follow suit.
Some 66% of U.S. workers say companies should adopt extended vacation policies, like a month off in August, in their workplaces, according to a Morning Consult survey of 1,047 U.S. adults.
I work in IT for a major telecom provider in Scandinavia, and almost everyone takes 3 weeks summer vacation, mostly at the same time.
Management recommends taking as much as possible over the summer, as we have a 5-6 week “slow period” when people’s 3 weeks don’t align.
Other than that, it’s common to just take the rest during other school holidays.
We get 6 weeks by default and earn our way up to 7 weeks after 5 years.
I came here hoping somecritter had asked what “OOO” is. Nocritter has, so I’ve decided that it must mean “Object-Oriented Overtime.”
(Okay, I looked it up and it seems to be “out of office” but that’s not as funny)
What would you say the minimum would be?
In Denmark it’s 5 weeks, a lot (most?) get 1 week extra, some get more days every year they stay at the same employer, and a few get more (common in banking sector).
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That’s because politicians are so far separated from the average American. Some of them are so old and senile and have been in power so long, they don’t even realize how bad it is for the average American, and on top of that, because they don’t think it’s as bad as it is, they don’t care.
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It’s the money in politics. Doesn’t matter how young or old the politicians are.
I’d say it depends but the older ones are more likely to be influenced by money
I have always wished that requiring congressmen work a minimum wage job in their district that they have to look for and apply to like the rest of us while out of session would do anything. Deal with some Karens to humble them properly.
No. It’s because the constitution effective abolishes democracy, by ensuring a two-party system.
In the US democracy is limited to one coin toss worth of decision making once every four years. Add to that that their first-to-the-post system eliminates all election power to non-swing-states, that means ~40 of the states have no democratic input at all, and the rest has up to 15 bit worth of democratic input over their whole life time.
Thus politicians have nothing to fear at all. They mess up, who cares? It’s gonna be their turn after the next term limit anyway.
The Constitution doesn’t employ a 2 party system and actually our founding fathers were against it. It has been put in place since then. I do think the electoral college system does cause issues though. We need a ranked choice system or something else where all votes have some value.
That’s because Americans have no say in these issues. They’re brainwashed (well, 1/2 is) to think those things are sOciAliSm, which apparently is bad despite many voters having socialized medicine that they love. It’s the American way, convincing people that what they want is not in their best interest.
I would say th other half is brainwashed too, your 2 party system sucks. Things won’t get better if you have no choice in elections
There is no party of red and party of blue. It’s all a single party of green. And it’s not named after the color of trees.
Why green?
Land of the free, amirite?
Land of the free…to be manipulated.
The overwhelming majority of working class adults want these things, but also the overwhelming majority of working class adults also work for large corporations who do not want these things (because it costs them money/profits). Guess who has more money to buy off politicians? Walmart/Amazon/Target would work together to never let these beneficial policies go through congress. It would be worth it to them to spend literal billions to prevent it, because it would cost them billions in the long run.
The sad reality is we don’t really live in a democracy. It’s an oligarchy that allows us to think we are in control.
I have never understood why Americans doesn’t have trade union?
Like in Denmark we have trade unions where a working area is united like the health care area, have “FOA” there is trading “time off” payment and so on, for all in this area.?
There are trade unions in the USA but the cultural difference compared to in a Scandinavian country is very striking, both in terms of American vs Scandinavians unions themselves but also their support. It would surprise many Scandinavians to learn that many Americans don’t even want trade unions because it’s for example commonly seen as that they interfere with career paths, promoting seniority at the cost of new blood or keep the wages low because individual wages can be affected.
I think the culture collision here is that the whole idea behind unions in Scandinavia is to offer a stronger collective voice and bargaining actor to increase wages and other subjects that improves the standards and quality of life / motivation of their employees so that the relationship between the work place and the individual is less asymmetrical.
But it’s been a long journey and it still is even if unionizing in USA has seen an uptick in debates lately, because USA has a radical and capitalistic history where there are loud and influential voices that even asking for basic rights on a job can be seen as “greed” and the company looks for someone being less of a bother and not asking these questions instead. All due to weak unions, of course. Otherwise the company would of course lose too much in employee skills by excluding everyone having these demands (and already being union members) like the situation here in Scandinavia where this by consequence is simply not an option.
This is at least my two cents of this entire situation from the “outside” also in Europe, please correct me if I’m wrong…
The only way to vote for these issues is to vote to form a union.
The 98% of people who vote are voting for repressive corporate culture.
The people who don’t vote can’t afford to miss a day of work, and even if they did, they know the people they have to choose from won’t do anything to change it.
Therefore these polls are meaningless.
51% support slower employee response time outside of work hours
Uh, what? That does not compute. Either it’s work, or it is not work (and I don’t respond to anything, and don’t get contacted in the first place)
If you’re a skilled salaried worker the law doesn’t really consider you to have work hours. Furthermore, you aren’t required to be compensated for time you are on-call unless you are required to physically be present.
US labor laws are truly horrifying if you start asking yourself a few “what-ifs.” The entire system is built on good faith.
“Salaried worker” over here means just that you’re being paid for fixed, regular working hours - typically something like 37.5 or 40 hours per week. Anything on top of that is overtime, which needs to be compensated either in time off, or paid out.
On call rules also vary a lot by country, but typical it’s something like being paid 20-25% of your regular hourly wage while on call, with overtime pay when you’re taking a call.
I’ll never forget at my first job once I moved to Europe, boss reminded me to take my vacation days. “Yeah, I’m hourly, not salary, what vacation days?”
Yes, holiday pay/leave is accrued for casual hourly workers too, by law.
That said, when I switched to salary, off in lieu is a sticky loophole, not sure if it was legal but one place would wipe any leftover OIL on 31 Dec with no payout, so it was on you to take it, which wasn’t always possible (pay and time off is better, but work/life balance can be just as F-ed in Europe).
Yes, holidays can, by law, be reset on Jan 1st.
However, the company needs to have reminded you that it will, and also allow you to actually take the time off.
If you have 30 days on December 1st, then they need to allow you to either take the days forward into the year or take it in December.
We have salary exempt and salary non-exempt in the US. The exempt part being overtime pay.
Salary exempt would be jobs like managers who may have to work outside of normal hours to ensure continuity of the business. Such as making arrangements for sick workers.calling out.
Salary non-exempt are for positions in which they are paid a set work week but their function does not have unplanned work outside of their normal hours. So things like HR or accounting may be paid salary, but there really is no reason for something to come up outside of their work day. These people should be clocking in and out or at least capturing their time in some manner, because if they do end up working greater than 40 hours a week they are entitled to overtime pay.
Where is “over here”?
Pretty much all of the EU, at least - country specific regulations vary, but the basic framework is based on EU regulations.
34% of Americans responded “grind my body into the ground, capitalism daddy”
I don’t think they even responded, their mouth were probably full.
I’ve worked in companies with a presence in various European countries over my career. Whether or not everyone takes Summer leave at the same time very much depends on the company, and the country. I specifically remember working with a Finnish contractor firm who planned to have no billable time available at all in August, from anyone. But our offices in France and elsewhere never fully shut down in August, they were just very lightly staffed. Everyone took some multi-week summer holiday, just not the whole place at once.
It’s not just summer leave, either. There are people all over the world having kids and going out on maternity (or even paternity!) leave for months at a time. When my wife and I had our kids in the US, I didn’t get any extra paternity leave, and just used saved-up PTO. I particularly remember that my wife had to stay in the hospital for a bit after my first kid was born, so the two weeks I had saved up flew by in a flash. I recall my boss strongly encouraging me to dial in to a conference call on that last PTO day, and when I did his boss lashed into me for taking so much time off. I started sending out resumes shortly after.
On the other hand, when the Europeans I worked with later got their summer or parental leave, their Project Managers just dealt with it, and if it meant their schedules had to slip, they slipped, no temper tantrums required. And I think that is the key difference. American bosses and PMs are much more likely to get away with assigning blame for schedule slips downward, perhaps because not as many people are unionized.
Many types of workers in scandinavia is not as heavily unionized either. Perhaps the ones that are not, enjoy a form of herd immunity from worker abuse from the ones that are.
This is exactly why every worker should be supporting unions even if their industry doesn’t have one. Rising tides and all that.
Depending on the country, there aren’t that many people in unions. Most countries in the EU (not Europe in general) have laws that protect the workers better than workers in the USA. The result is a different work culture.
Which is often still the result of strong union actions in the past, even if only 20 or 30 % are currently unionised.
Living in EU, mid thirties, full time office job getting about 33 days off per year all together. Max 4 weeks in a row tho, and must match schedules with colleagues so all keeps on running, no full closing of offices. The older you get, the more vacation days you get. Older colleagues complain they have too much holidays…
Then don’t vote for Republicans.
30ish percent of Americans identify as Republican (depending on the poll), so these types of questions are always ~66% of Americans in support
But many independent voters who want these policies vote for Republicans. If they want these policies, voting for Republicans will not get them there.
I know lots of us people with “unlimited time off” type contracts. No one ever takes more than a week because they are afraid that their bosses wouldnt like it.
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I…do not know what’s being said here.
In Germany, you get at least 28 days of holidays per year. Company even has to budget for them, so if you don’t take them, it creates a huge headache for them in regards to finalizing their yearly results because they might have to keep money back. Sorry, I don’t have the correct economical term, in German it is a Rückstellung. So there is a very high insentive to get all of your people to take their holidays, because otherwise it’s a pain in the ass and will delay everything.
Does Germany also have a maximum amount of days an employee can save before they are legally required to take them out?
Research shows that people with unlimited time off take fewer days than people with set amount of time off.
Yeah because it’s a fucking scam who’s primary purpose is to eliminate pto liability from their accounting. It’s the equivalent of the 401k scam that eliminated corporate pension plans as a standard benefit.
My company has this and just about everyone I work with utilizes the unlimited time off. Most people land in the 5-6 weeks of vacation a year + sick + personal business + holidays.
There are the few who make work their hobby too, but you can’t do anything for those people IMO
If I’m stuck in the USA, I’m gonna find an unlimited time of job and actually use that benefit like Europeans. Fuck American work culture.
I’m sure you’ll keep that job for several months. The other part of American “work culture” is how quickly and easily we can lose that job. Be happy that you have some worker protection
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For some that’s true.
But we undergo a great deal of brainwashing. Unions are demonized, billionaires lionized, puritanical (insane) work ethic lauded, anything less than that vilified, etc.
Attempts at unionization are aggressively subverted and crushed by large corpos.
And most people are given just enough to not want to risk it all to get a bit more.
It will be a while, yet, before US culture shifts enough that more people side with unions, join unions, and build critical mass. Although, younger generations seem to be more aware of the anti-labor BS more than my gen (x) was at a similar age.
Yeah, they’re so afraid to unionize that…they unionized in Starbucks, UPS, railroads, hospitals, maintenance management…
If you get such a contract, make sure to read it closely. I had it once, phrased more like “there is no policy restricting time off”. It’s really up to your manager and it means there is an invisible limit that may be different for everyone, you won’t know about until you hit it.
In my case, I had a good manager, but sure enough, got dinged after taking off two weeks in the year (the worst part was no actual vacation but individual days off for kid’s appointments). I much prefer an actual limit, because then you can take it
That is why time off is supposed to be mandatory
I’ve been told that generally, this is so the company doesn’t have to pay you back for unused PTO if you leave the company.
I can’t vouch for this as true, but it makes sense.
Why do 34% of Americans not want paid time off work?
Because they will think of someone else who “doesn’t deserve it” getting it and mald.
Realistically, they are probably the small (and large) business owners that will have to pay for a month off work for their employees.
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Or were part of the base so trained as to kneejerk into thinking that sounds like “Communism”.
It’s mind boggling that there’s no minimum PTO law in the US
There’s not a law because most professional jobs have PTO at level that would meet any mandatory minimum level.
So it would affect nothing for those jobs and be beneficial to others to have those minimums
I love paid time off. But the summer when tons other people are off and everything is busy/expensive/hot would be my very last choice.
I’m all about that off season.
We don’t specify when you go on vacation in Europe it’s just 5 weeks of paid time off
Is there a story behind your username?
Agreed, I was on vacation earlier this month for a couple weeks since it was the only time that made sense with my work schedule. It was just brutally expensive to stay anywhere because things were booked up.
German here: I have yet to witness these “European-style” vacations mentioned in the post title.
Most workplaces seem to frown at people taking >2 consecutive weeks of vacation, esp. if they don’t have kids and do it in main travel season / during school holidays. Handing in ~3 weeks of holidays often at least needs some kind of explanation to the team-lead, e.g. “I have school kids who have their summer holidays and we need to keep them busy until school starts again.”
I have yet to see a single company going easy on someone saying “I’ll be off all of August KTHXBYE”.
German here as well - this hasn’t been an issue in any company I’ve worked so far, all didn’t have an issue with 3+ weeks.
I’m glad to hear it’s not an issue in your experience / industry.
Here in England there’s a guy I work with who’s taking six months off soon to go to Thailand. Thing is, we’re working for the local authority and they’re pretty good about holidays and sick pay because the wages aren’t very competitive and they need to retain staff.
Lol as an American I feel uncomfortable putting in more than 2 consecutive DAYS in a row and I’m salaried, not a service worker or anything. I can’t even imagine have 2 weeks off. I’ve only been able to manage that once in my adult life during one of my transitions to a new company.
I’m European and I have 1 month across all the year. I took 1 week during spring, 1 week in July, 1 week in August and I have another week for the rest of the year.
I couldn’t say “hey, I won’t show up during the whole month”.
You can split your vacation time into multiple parts, but one of them must be at least 14 calendar days. It may be hard to claim a whole month, but two weeks should be possible.
