How bout we compare it to your very culturally similar neighbour to the north?
Vacation time is critical for a healthy, adaptive workforce. There are plenty of places (mine included) where people are politely told in no uncertain terms they MUST leave for two contiguous weeks.
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IMO, it’s more that management intimidates people out of taking it - making them feel like they have no choice but to stay and work like a good drone. I was at a place where they pooled all days, to be used as employees wanted. I tried exactly one time to use all of my vacation time - six weeks. It was purposely during a low-activity time of year, and I gave six months notice of my plans. Still, my manager had issues. I had to cross-train a co-worker for a month to supervise my team doing simple maintenance work, and schedule weekly calls during my vacation to check in (in case they had any problems) before my manager felt comfortable.
I was traveling from the US to Europe and back, so you can imagine the weekly call time zone headache, as well as cell reception challenges. About two months after my return home, I was included in the next round of layoffs (the only person with over ten years with the firm on the list). Coincidence? I think not.
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Another factor is that frequently, if you aren’t there, picking up the slack falls on your cow-orkers, because management isn’t going to bring in anyone to cover for you. Hence, you are generally guilted into taking as little time off as possible.
Last time I took a vacation of more than 4 days, I requested the time off a year in advance, and management still didn’t get anyone to cover for me. The person directly under me hates being an administrator with the passion of a thousand burning suns; we tried to find another appropriate substitute to fill my position temporarily, but she was forced into the manager position anyhow. Vacation time is no good if you feel compelled to use as little of it as possible.
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There’s a fine line between succession planning and “Hey, everything was fine while you were on vacation. Can you remind us why we need you?”
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I usually see it measured as value of goods and services produced over production costs. You do more work for less money and you’re more productive.
On a visit to Scandinavia, I had some amusing conversations with people wondering “how many weeks of vacation you get in America.” I didn’t know how to tell them, “Well, legally, none. At all. Though on average, people get one.”
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So, how about you aim for 4 weeks pa (not inc public holidays)… and don’t forget the leave loading (17% at least).
Ask Donald to sort that out for you.
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The problem is overtime exempt salary rules. This never seems to get mentioned in these articles (and isn’t mentioned here). Once you take a salaried/exempt job, you are the slave to the employer. There is zero marginal cost to the employer for your hours over 40 per week in these positions, and there are no legal constraints to how much time they can demand. I don’t think this is the case in almost any other country. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’d really like to be wrong.
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Vacation, like everything else, is a trade-off, and Americans (and realistically North Americans) have a strong tendency to choose higher pay over more vacation.
I believe the reasoning is that if you base salary is $80K for 52 weeks, then they feel offering $75K with 3 weeks vacation is going net higher quality candidates than offering $70K with 6 weeks vacation.
I think one cross-country comparisons are always fraught, and ignoring the cultures involved may tend to tilt one’s conclusions.
I perceive that idea as mental illness, and if I ever claim it myself, I want all of you to find a gun and kill me, cuz I’d have completely lost my mind at that point.
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That is only part of the problem, and actually decreasing in overall affect. ~60% of us workers are hourly, and the LR trend is rising.
Yup. I work in IT, and while all the slaves in Sysadmin are oncall 24/7, I steadfastly stick to hourly work.
If I don’t value my time, the company certainly won’t. And the company certainly won’t respect my independence either. If I’m not at work, then my brain doesn’t think about work.
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I lucked out where I had managers who looked the other way at entering 2 hours for 20 minutes of actual work or 1 hour just cause I had to check something at 3am. Or rather they were keenly aware tired admins make mistakes and were good with us sleeping in/just not working during the day if we were on call. Mind you I had 15 other admins to share the work load with. By the time I got into a team that didn’t need to be on call they were getting a proper 3 shifts of work going so nobody had to be on call.
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They can demand whatever they want, and you can politely but firmly say no. (You get a lot more respect if you show some self-respect first.) You can also make it clear to them that it’s in their own best interest not to make self-defeating demands. Working long hours leads to fatigue, quality problems, bad decisions, creativity and initiative drain, and trust issues at best, and eventually on to full burnout. That’s not just the employee suffering, the whole company suffers from it. Salaried positions need employees who aren’t suffering from those problems. Companies need initiative, creativity, good decision making, leadership, and communication, and experienced employees know that. So a company that pushes too hard will lose the good employees.
Americans need the higher pay because we are our own medical care system, pension system, education system, social safety net, etc. If American life were less desperate and precarious, people might be willing to work for less money and take more vacation.
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Heck, I live in NZ and get 5 weeks paid holiday a year, and it accrues indefinitely (though they push you to use it if you have over 10 weeks saved). Then when I’m on parental leave (as I am now) for 12 months I accrue 5 weeks while I’m away and my job is saved until I get back. And we have 18 weeks paid parental leave (about to go to 22 in July and 26 next year) - but the maximum is less than half my wage. My union makes sure my employer tops up the governmental parental leave to my full wage. So for this one year parental leave I am receiving full pay for 6 months. And all this is pretty shit compared to what people in some European countries get.
This is why we pay tax, not for massive armies and defense but for support of the populace. Although not everyone agrees with that. A nurse at my husband’s work (a university health centre) told him it was “pathetic” that he was taking up the 9 weeks full paid parental leave he was entitled to.
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It’s pathetic that someone with that attitude chose a profession where caring and compassion are supposed to be at the forefront.
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Perhaps, but I’d say that the trade-off is even more concentrated at the higher end, which presumably isn’t particularly precarious (or at least not much more precarious than anywhere else in the world).
Honestly, I think American culture (and this as always this is a generalization) prefers a larger dwelling (perhaps even a house), a newer car, a larger TV, higher-end cell phone, etc. to more vacation time. I’m constantly surprised at how modestly my 10th-30th percentile techie peers live in Europe (even if I envy their vacations).
And good for them. But if my American peers chose different priorities, that’s their choice as well. One thing that should be noted - if you do have in-demand, marketable skills, many companies are quite open to lowering salary for longer vacation in a pretty straight trade-off. I only have one personal data point - I asked once in an interview, and was told that they were fine with it, but “almost nobody” (maybe 2-3%) ever asked.
I do think this is much more common in my current company, where the strong majority are not Canadian born, and thus appreciate (and take a pay cut) to get a long enough vacation to travel to… well just about anywhere in the world (no employees hailing from Antarctica, but that’s about it).
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Personally, if there’s going to be a stay-at-home parent, I think it’s super important for the other parent to get enough time raising small infant that they clearly understand that taking care of a small baby is about 5 times harder than their day job (at least for most desk jobs).
And for doing the vastly easier job, you get the respect of your peers and you get paid!
(Okay, it was super valuable for me. Knowing that no matter how hard or exhausting my day was, my wife had it much tougher, helped keep things in perspective.)
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The permanent one.
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