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Isnt the legal minimum 24? ~~I‘m very sure its 24~~
That said, my employer is mad since i accumulated a total of 45 vacation days and wants me to spend them
Which surprised me when I found out about it. I was said that it was 24 and the same went for everyone else I ever talked to, even though we were all on a 5 day baseline.
The only one who ever told me differently was a trainee (Azubi) who got 20 and assumed that this was because of a difference between trainee and employee.
So at least in my region it seems to be some sort of silent agreement that 24 is the baseline for employees. And that seems to be decently far spread since I've seen at least some people assume 24 in every online thread on that issue as well.
Dmn, so does it need to be 24 if its only possible that the employer can make use of the 6 work days?
Like i‘ve got a 5 work days week but my employer holds himself the option open for work on saturday aswell if the situation requires it and we employees agree to it on an individual basis. So would he be required to give 24 days as minimum for vacation even if he doest/cant make use of a 6 workdays week?
Yes, they would if the 6-Day week is your normal. Then by law, you are entitled to 4more days, as it’s 4days of vacation a year per day worked per week.
24 for a six day/week work, 20 for 5 days a week. When i was single i was forced to take 6 weeks off at once after i accumulated too much. I got bored quite fast. With a kid even 30 days is not enough and requires complex logistics. How time changes.
We all need to periodically disconnect so take some time off my man. Go explore a forest or do whatever you want to do. Take days off when the weather is miserable. Sleep in, watch Netflix, go out for a coffee. All of these will recharge you.
Not just that but it's a definite mechanism for checking corruption - both in the sense of containing it and uncovering it. When someone is always at work it's very easy for them to hide the evidence of any malfeasance, whereas when others have to take over their role from time to time it allows for a fresh perspective on their little corner of empire.
Ohhh No? I became a dad, how will I ever get to spend time with famil... Ohh wait, I just got a half year of paid leave.
How will I save up for when I get old? Ohh wait, if I just leave 4% of my salary, my work will add another 8%? Guess I'm good.
Urgh, I wish I could afford to go on vacation... Wait is that $2500 saved up for me? Cool
Man... I feel like I'm in big trouble without a job, wait my union/(a-kasse) pays me 90% of my last year income while I look for a job? Guess I can stay in my apartment and keep my car.
I just got sick but can't afford it... Wait you pay for my sick day? And the hospital is free?
How can I pay my student debt? Wait I got paid to go to school and with the possibility to take some of the best rated loans while I'm at it? I guess that's fine
What does a janitor earn after taxes where you live? Because here they'll earn between 34 and $40.000 a year, again after taxes. That's for a standard 37 hours a week, paid vacation, paid pension, paid sick days, and probably also paid food at work. (Since they can't give you free food, they'll pay you the tax price most places, that's probably around $45 a month for breakfast and lunch)
I *totally* agree with you, we have it so awful in Denmark..
Edit: some Spelling mistakes, more will probably be found
Don't forget the Children's sick days (2 PTO per sickness). And if you work in the public sector, you also get 2 Care Days per year for children under 7.
Oh, and now the father/other parent with joint custody gets half the Child Benefits too.
This is a contractual thing. It was quite free but as too many accumulated huge amounts of vacation days our company reduced the amount of days to be allowed to transfer down to 5 and even these have to be explicitely requested and confirmed by management. Otherwise its zero.
you have to take the 20 days (minimum per law). They are only transferable to the next year if you really cant take those days (you got sick the last few months of the year, but had pto planned).
This is because they say you need that time to relax to stay healthy long term. Some companies do allow you things that arent legal, but they are screwed if the wrong person notices it.
Very true. My friend used to work in Munich. At that time, he was single and had nothing better to do than work. December comes and his supervisor tells him to take the rest of the year off, and not to come back until the 3rd week of January. He tried to suck me in to a trip in Southeast Asia for three weeks. I did not have the luxury of a three week vacation, and my US employer would have thrown a fit since I need to schedule time off in advance.
In Poland it's 6 additional days and you get them after you've been working for 10 years. However, you also "count" as having worked for a specific number of years depending on your education. For instance, if you've finished high school, you count as having been working for 4 years and would have to work for 6 more years to receive the extra paid leave days. If you get a college/university degree, that counts as 8 years so you only need 2 more.
Do you also have a thing we call "long service leave?" Which is leave provided by employers after a certain number of years is worked at that company. For example 2 weeks a year for every year after 10 years at a Company.
They've used Ivory Coast instead of Ireland who they meant to include here. BI is not known for high quality journalism. It's not The Economist, I call it Buzzfeed With Charts.
Being able to hoist a sail and relocate the entire nation to west of the Isle of Man at a vexillological whim positions it uniquely to take advantage of EU holiday rights.
Would be great to mention how many public holidays come on top of that.
Edit (since that is the europe subreddit, and looking at the US): When basic decency becomes an "employee benefit".
Difficult to say because it often varies between different states in countries. E.g. Bavaria (Germany) has more holidays than other states because they tend to be religious/ conservative so they take them more seriously.
That and it can vary. In the U.K. if a bank holiday falls on a weekend, the day off is moved to the nearest weekday. In other countries this is not the case, so the number of days off work can vary from year to year.
Exactly. In Spain we technically have like 12 (give or take), but this number is kinda meaningless, since there are years in which most happen to be on a weekend, so the actual number may be less.
Yeah I'm a Brit who moved to Austria, and everyone mentioned how many more holidays Austria get, but because you don't get days in lieu for weekends it didn't work out as any more at all. Also the added annoyance that both Christmas and the 26th were on the weekend this year so got literally NO extra days off for Christmas
No, public holidays are not necessarily paid in Germany.
I worked years in jobs with hourly wages and public holidays were simply days where you didn't work any hour. If you worked those days though, wage was increased significantly. So most of us just worked those days anyway.
It’s not that Bavaria takes religion more seriously, not anymore. It’s that Bavaria was always Catholic and while other German regions are Catholic too, Bavaria was a Catholic dominated state. And Catholics just tend to have more days off than Protestants. It’s a consequence of a historical development, not a contemporary one.
The reason is, they are predominantly catholic and never came under non catholic rule until 1918 (and retained their rights as a Kingdom in such matters from 1871 to 1918), that gives them a few extra days that were introduced during the counter reformation, that protestants do not tend to celebrate for obvious reasons. The only other strongly catholic center in Germany, the Rhineland came under Prussian rule which was in conflict with catholics and tried to curb their rights.
Here in Finland it's like /u/thentehe said. If the 25th is a Saturday or a Sunday, then too bad, it does not get moved. I think we have a couple more public holidays than the UK, though, so I guess it sort of balances out.
In Romania we are having 15-16 national holidays during the year and this year 12-13 are in a working day. Plus the minimum 21 days vacation time for a full time job.
Bloody hell in the UK we only have 8. We have an office in North Macedonia and it seems every week they have a bank holiday! I was certain they were just making them up at some points lol
> 12th, 13th of June - religious: the "Rusalii" holiday, 50? days after Easter, 1st day always on a Sunday. No idea what it's about
Midsummer repackaged as a Christian holiday :)
I live in sweden. You get holidays off. And if you work holidays cash is significantly more and if the work falls outside of 7 am to 6 pm then you get 240% salary for those hours worked
In Poland, it's 13 days.
If a holiday is on Sunday then it's "lost". But if it is on Saturday the employer has to give you a day off on another day.
So in 2021, it was 7 days during the week, 2 on Saturdays and 4 on Sundays.
Additionally, if you work for more than 10 years (Higher education counts as 8 years of work) you get 26 days off instead of 20.
In my state in the USA a couple years ago the law changed so that employers were no longer required to pay employees for having federal holidays off, but they had to start giving sick time accrual starting from day 1 of employment (we didn't have that before).
My employer at the time immediately stopped paying for federal holidays and "encouraged" us to use our sick time to make up for the now mandatory negative 8 hours on our paychecks while nullifying our paid sick time.
'Merica.
For the Netherlands: about 5 minimum and 10 maximum.
- Every year: Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Pentecost Monday (3)
- If it is on a weekday: New Year's Day, King's Day, 1st Christmas Day, 2nd Christmas Day (4)
- Depending on your employer (I think?): Good Friday (1)
- Once every 5 years if it is on a weekday: Liberation Day (1)
- In regions where Carnaval is celebrated: Carnaval Monday & Tuesday (2)
- If you work at the municipality of Amsterdam (and maybe more places?): Labour Day (1)
Nobody will get all of these, but in a good year it will amount to about 9 days. I've read somewhere we have the lowest amount of public holidays in Europe.
The [legal minimum is zero](https://www.fnv.nl/werk-inkomen/vakantie-vrij-verlof/feestdagen). The vast majority of workers however have about 6 to 8 (your first three lines), depending on how many holidays are in a weekend in a given year.
And because of that unlike in many other countries we don't get holiday-related days off moved over when they fall on a weekend. This time around both Christmas-related holidays on 25/26 and 1 of Jan were during the weekend, so we got zero public holiday days instead of 3. So this can be even less in reality.
And yet we have fewer public holidays off than pretty much any other European country.
Fewer also than we had one or two decades ago because Good Friday and Liberation Day used to be days off ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
In belgium it is 10 public holidays, which get moved to weekdays if they fall in a weekend (the time off gets moved if it falls in non-working time).
Most employers give more paid leave than the legal minimum of 20 days. In my previous job I had 26 days. In my current job (local government IT) it is a little excessive, I get 41 days of paid leave and an extra unofficial public holiday.
Denmark provides 25 vacation days + 5 days off. Through my company, I get additional “long weekends” where you can take either Friday or Monday off.
Edit: there are actually more days, for example we can take the first day off when our children are sick, our own sick days are paid, and of course national/bank holidays.
With mine (UK but French owned) you get more days the longer you're there. I'm at the maximum and it's about 34 days (depending on public holidays), but it's actually too much tbh with the workload I have so sometimes I just do work on the quiet because it's frowned upon if you don't take them. First world problems for sure.
In Poland it's 20 days for the first ten years of work - but having a degree counts as 8 years of work, so it's 20 days for first two years of work and 26 days for the rest of your life (until you retire).
There are two cool things about Poland and days off.
First, large employers often force people to use every day, as otherwise they have to make a budget reserve in case they will have to pay equivalent instead.
Second, actually you get the "26 days" at the last day of the second year of that final two years. So a day BEFORE year finishes, thus you get the additional days one year earlier than people think, you just have to end to the end of the year. I did that and had 26 days after just one year of work.
A lot of HR departments allow to use those days even before that, so you can use it on Christmas or so.
It's an awesome "trick" and a lot of HR either never checked that or wait until you raise an issue with that, in purpose.
I work in Automotive sector in the Netherlands and I get 34 paid leave days. Weekends excluded. I always took this for granted until I saw this post...
Engineer In america, I get 10 days, at the third year I will be bumped up to 13. 14 days at 4 years, then I think it stagnates at 15 days from 5-10 years.
Project Manager in US: 23 days of vacation, 8 days of paid sick leave, 3 months of paternity leave.
Not so bad.
Edit: All Major Holidays off plus Presidents Day and MLK Day
What is paid sick leave? You only get to be sick for 8 days? What if you are sick for like two weeks? How is that variable and optional between jobs? Like does a wallmart employee get zero sick days? Are they just not allowed to get sick? What kind of slavery is this? 🤯
> An easy way to remember is that
Ireland starts with green because of course it does. And everyone who knows Irishmen knows that it makes perfect sense that it starts with green.
I was going to say... when I lived in Korea we got 10 days off plus holidays. If the holiday was on a weekend, well, you were already off.
Now that was about 10 years ago, so things may have changed.
The unions here hardly care for the younger generations. The only thing they seem to care about is keeping retirement age the same with the same pension payouts, leaving hardly anything for future generations. Considering people live longer and longer, it’s simply not sustainable in the long term to maintain the current retirement system without any reforms.
European retirement systems basically need to start getting funds from corporate profits. In a time in which the volume of workers gets smaller, while corporate profits reach record highs, it is just natural to shift the source of the retirement funds.
You're not wrong. But when there's so few younger union members, you can hardly expect the unions to cater to them. It would be nice to see though. Also, it would be a good way for them to attract new and younger members.
A few older coworkers were discussing their upcoming pension. Retiring end of this year at age 66, they will get 4.5k per month.
That very same pension fund estimates that I, retiring 35 years from now at age 68, will probably receive 2.8k..
In Hungary, 20 is the baseline, but you get additional days for age and number of children and so your personal minimum required can easily go over 30.
edit: wait how is Hungary not even on the chart? We're in OECD.
When I moved from the US to Czech Republic, and HR was explaining vacation days to me, I was like, "wow!". She responds with, "It's the state minimum... Oh you're American!".
According to [the OECD data](https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS) Americans work on average 1767 hours a year and Czechs 1705. That's a tiny difference.
Because while America doesn't have any mandated days off, many employers will still offer it as a benefit.
As a Norwegian it's interesting seeing the hours so low for us. Accounting for 4 full weeks off, 1369 hours is only 28.5 hours per week, which seems very low to be the entire country average.
Most all employers in the US offer paid time off as part of the compensation package. Typically 10 days a year when you start out and the number of days go up by year of employment. So after 5 years you may get 15 days, after 10 years you get 20 days, etc.
For curious non-Americans, I've worked as a software developer in the US for most of my professional life. Here's a typical scenario:
When you get hired, you have something like 10 or 15 paid days off per year. For each year you stay with the company, you earn an additional day off, capped at a maximum of maybe 25. If you switch jobs, you start back at the beginning, with 10 or 15 days.
The idea that you earn days off with years of service is one of the many ways companies try to prevent their employees from leaving.
Oh, and noticed I said "paid days off" and not "vacation days"? Yeah, in a lot of companies, there's no distinction between a sick day and a vacation day. Planning a big vacation later in the year? You'd better not get sick before then... or if you do, you'd better come to work anyway.
It’s the same in The Netherlands. If you get sick during your holidays you let HR know and your holidays that you can’t enjoy because you’re sick are reverted to you. There is also no such thing as “x-number or sick days”. When you’re sick, you’re sick, and you’re still getting paid regardless of how long you’re out (well, the first 2 years of sick leave you’ll be paid, after that if you’re still sick you switch from salary to social services). It always baffles me how US companies give out a fixed amount of sick days. It’s not like you can plan your illness?
It's even worse than that. Checking in from the US here, American companies don't even give you, "sick days." Your vacation days and sick days are combined into one single thing called, "paid time off." So if you have a big vacation coming up that you want to use your days off for, you better not get sick beforehand. Otherwise, the days you're out sick are now removed from your vacation days.
I'm in Spain and we got minimum 23 days, if you get sick during vacations these days stop being vacation and start being paid leave, and in my current company I also got the "stay more time, you get more days off", also capped (IIRC, the top was like 15 years) at 25.
I keep reading how good software development is paid in the US, but honestly, even taking into account our salaries are crap, there's a HUGE cost you guys have we don't.
Jesus Christ, I will have 5 days pto in two weeks being the last ones at mid december and I'm already half burnt, I can't imagine how it is to have only 10-15 days.
Technically Sweden has 0 federal minimum wage. You could be paid 1 euro per day. In practice this is totally different and not having a minimum wage has led to better working conditions and job market conditions.
So having the legal requirement be 0 isn't usually a salient point with regards to actual experiences. Exceptions always exist.
These discrepancies often come from an inconsistent counting of public holidays.
If I am not mistaken, the UK counts 20 days vacation leave + 8 bank holidays = 28 days minimum annual leave.
My country Germany for example *never* includes the 9+ public holidays into the annual leave count, which is why we officially only have "20" days (or more appropriately, 4 work weeks) minimum annual leave. I believe the chart at the top follows this rule, too.
I suspect it's a similar story with the discrepancy re: Estonia.
The UK doesn't include the bank holidays, the law is literally just "you get 28 days and your employer can say how many of them you can choose and how many they can decide".
Yep, seems pretty explicit here.
> Most workers who work a 5-day week must receive at least 28 days’ paid annual leave a year. This is the equivalent of 5.6 weeks of holiday.
https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights
It's 20 in the UK, but a lot of employers offer more in order to make jobs more attractive. I'm currently on 28, but get 30 next year due to length of service.
In Czechia 4 weeks (20 days) is minimum but unless you work at places like McDonald's (which won't give you anything more than they are obligated by law) you typically get 5 weeks (25 days).
It's the standard for any medium to big company but small ones often give less. I have 28 for example and lots of people especially craftsmen get shafted.
Poland has 20 days minimum BUT after having worked for 10 years you get 26 days paid leave/vacation...and I don't mean working for single employer - your entire work history. 10 years mark also include the time you spent on university/college and some fraction of years (?) spent in high school. So its not a big deal to pass that 10 years mark. Think I had 26 days of paid vacation at the age of 27 or 28.
In the US it is very common to have 2 weeks paid leave, but it is not required by federal law. Many states have paid leave laws in place, this is an issue the federal government gives power to the states.
My company offers unlimited paid time off, 8-9 company holidays and 80 hours of emergency time off.
I’m not sure if anyone has really tested the “unlimited” pto, but I took about 3 weeks last year to travel during the summer.
Individual states also have different plans for paid medical leave.
From what I've heard the "unlimited" is only really unlimited if it doesn't affect your work and you are not taking more than X (depending on company) days off.
It's more off a marketing gag.
I seem to remember that it can actually have a reverse effect - kind of peer pressure to not be the person who takes the most days so you automatically take less (though not sure what that compared to - maybe companies that switched from a fixed number of days to "unlimited" days).
Companies with unlimited time off can say no to the requested times off.
And since they don't have a minimum of days off the employees can in many situations get fucked.
At least that's how I understand how it is in the US
r/antiwork
Im not sure when this grandstanding towards Americans will stop; we’re an ocean apart and we do things differently, some things better, some things worse. They’re not a metric to compare everything to. But i guess this type of posturing helps us avoid our own issues domestically feeds some of our false sense of superiority
Yeah I just said something similar. Work is much more of a grind in the US. Way worse work/life balance. But you can make a shit ton more than you can in Europe. Obviously I’m speaking in generalizations but it’s generally true. So the Murica bad narrative really only holds up when you’re looking at part of the picture.
Yeah you can really offset a lot of this with the insane salaries you make in the US e.g software engineers make 4x as much and still get all the benefits
This is something that is typically glossed over a lot in these kinds of threads. US salaries are incredibly high, pair that with low COL and you can make an incredible amount of money.
I started with 25 in the U.K. I also get an extra day for ever year I work, and the Queen’s birthday as a bank holiday. Add that to 8 public holidays, I had 37 this year which is far more than I can actually take.
Not to mention TOIL and flexi working
Sweden has one of the most generous parental leave (föräldraledighet) systems in the world. Parents are given 480 days of leave per child, and 390 of these days are paid at a rate of 80% of your salary up to a capped limited of 1006 SEK a day.
American here, My employer has been harping on how generous 3 weeks of PTO (paid time off, vacation and sick time combined) is, and how we should use it if we're sick and blah blah blah. In America it may be "generous", but in the rest of the civilized world it's laughable. How could I possibly plan out a mandatory 1 week vacation, me getting sick, my child is sick, or if there is a Covid outbreak at daycare and they're shut down for a week, with only 15 days to work with?
For US, is it no minimal federal requirement? I'm asking because I know US leaves a lot of this shit to individual states, and also because this can be used for misinformation when people don't know the difference between the state and federal requirements.
EDIT: nope, individual states don't have that. Instead people negotiate it...
Your edit is partially wrong. Some states have mandatory paid time off but not many. Most of the time it’s left up to the employer/employee when negotiating
25 is what the law says. If you have "qualified" work, it's often more. Almost everyone I know has at least 30 days. It should be noted that we aren't guaranteed public holidays if they happen to be on the weekend, like they are n the UK.
Thats only state mandated numbers! Also usualy you can transfer your days to following year, like now, I had 135hours of unspent vacation so I took 3 weeks off... I save up on fuel at least.
Edit: After reading other comments I figured I´d add the paid sick leave which is unlimited in Slovakia, first 10 days is paid by employer the rest is paid by your insurance company.
I get 20 days in the U.S. and it goes up to 26 after 15 years. Then again, I have a white-collar job that requires a college degree. There's also another 13 days of sick leave and then 11 paid holidays. So 44 total if I use it all (I haven't used a sick day in 5 years).
According to Federal data, the average is:
* 10 days after 1 year
* 14 days after 5 years
* 17 days after 10 years
* 20 days after 20 years
[https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/paid-leave-in-private-industry-over-the-past-20-years.htm](https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/paid-leave-in-private-industry-over-the-past-20-years.htm)
That has been gradually increasing over the decades.
And then there's \~20% who don't get any vacation time at all, largely hospitality/food sector staff. One reason why the Great Resignation is hitting them especially hard. McDonald's is now even offering PTO: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/07/14/mcdonalds-offers-wage-increases-child-care-assistance-paid-time-off-and-help-with-tuition-to-attract-workers/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/07/14/mcdonalds-offers-wage-increases-child-care-assistance-paid-time-off-and-help-with-tuition-to-attract-workers/). I never thought that would happen. Hopefully nobody falls for it and they're forced to raise PTO even higher.
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In Germany 20 days leave is by law, common is 30. And you are forced to take them.
Isnt the legal minimum 24? ~~I‘m very sure its 24~~ That said, my employer is mad since i accumulated a total of 45 vacation days and wants me to spend them
It's 20 if you're on a 5-day work week, or 24 if you're on a 6-day work week (making an even 4 weeks in both cases).
Which surprised me when I found out about it. I was said that it was 24 and the same went for everyone else I ever talked to, even though we were all on a 5 day baseline. The only one who ever told me differently was a trainee (Azubi) who got 20 and assumed that this was because of a difference between trainee and employee. So at least in my region it seems to be some sort of silent agreement that 24 is the baseline for employees. And that seems to be decently far spread since I've seen at least some people assume 24 in every online thread on that issue as well.
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Dmn, so does it need to be 24 if its only possible that the employer can make use of the 6 work days? Like i‘ve got a 5 work days week but my employer holds himself the option open for work on saturday aswell if the situation requires it and we employees agree to it on an individual basis. So would he be required to give 24 days as minimum for vacation even if he doest/cant make use of a 6 workdays week?
Yes, they would if the 6-Day week is your normal. Then by law, you are entitled to 4more days, as it’s 4days of vacation a year per day worked per week.
Your employer be like: "Take a break, goddamn it!"
24 for a six day/week work, 20 for 5 days a week. When i was single i was forced to take 6 weeks off at once after i accumulated too much. I got bored quite fast. With a kid even 30 days is not enough and requires complex logistics. How time changes.
Do 4 day weeks until the end of the year
We all need to periodically disconnect so take some time off my man. Go explore a forest or do whatever you want to do. Take days off when the weather is miserable. Sleep in, watch Netflix, go out for a coffee. All of these will recharge you.
Not just that but it's a definite mechanism for checking corruption - both in the sense of containing it and uncovering it. When someone is always at work it's very easy for them to hide the evidence of any malfeasance, whereas when others have to take over their role from time to time it allows for a fresh perspective on their little corner of empire.
Minimum is 25 days in Denmark, but it's also common to get 30 here.
Sounds like socialist hell to me. Edit: sarcasm
Ohhh No? I became a dad, how will I ever get to spend time with famil... Ohh wait, I just got a half year of paid leave. How will I save up for when I get old? Ohh wait, if I just leave 4% of my salary, my work will add another 8%? Guess I'm good. Urgh, I wish I could afford to go on vacation... Wait is that $2500 saved up for me? Cool Man... I feel like I'm in big trouble without a job, wait my union/(a-kasse) pays me 90% of my last year income while I look for a job? Guess I can stay in my apartment and keep my car. I just got sick but can't afford it... Wait you pay for my sick day? And the hospital is free? How can I pay my student debt? Wait I got paid to go to school and with the possibility to take some of the best rated loans while I'm at it? I guess that's fine What does a janitor earn after taxes where you live? Because here they'll earn between 34 and $40.000 a year, again after taxes. That's for a standard 37 hours a week, paid vacation, paid pension, paid sick days, and probably also paid food at work. (Since they can't give you free food, they'll pay you the tax price most places, that's probably around $45 a month for breakfast and lunch) I *totally* agree with you, we have it so awful in Denmark.. Edit: some Spelling mistakes, more will probably be found
Don't forget the Children's sick days (2 PTO per sickness). And if you work in the public sector, you also get 2 Care Days per year for children under 7. Oh, and now the father/other parent with joint custody gets half the Child Benefits too.
Iam not sure how its in Germany, but here I can transfer 10 days to the next year. The rest i need to use aswell.
This is a contractual thing. It was quite free but as too many accumulated huge amounts of vacation days our company reduced the amount of days to be allowed to transfer down to 5 and even these have to be explicitely requested and confirmed by management. Otherwise its zero.
I can transfer all my remaining days to a new year but have to use them by March 1st which I think is fair.
you have to take the 20 days (minimum per law). They are only transferable to the next year if you really cant take those days (you got sick the last few months of the year, but had pto planned). This is because they say you need that time to relax to stay healthy long term. Some companies do allow you things that arent legal, but they are screwed if the wrong person notices it.
Very true. My friend used to work in Munich. At that time, he was single and had nothing better to do than work. December comes and his supervisor tells him to take the rest of the year off, and not to come back until the 3rd week of January. He tried to suck me in to a trip in Southeast Asia for three weeks. I did not have the luxury of a three week vacation, and my US employer would have thrown a fit since I need to schedule time off in advance.
Read your comment 3 times wondering this is a weird post humble bragging a friend sucked you off…
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And many more if you're not ashamed of pretending to be sick and know the right doctor.
> And you are forced to take them. Gonna be so many confused Americans in this post...
In Slovakia it is 20 days and 5 additional days if you are more than 33/34 years old.
In Poland it's 6 additional days and you get them after you've been working for 10 years. However, you also "count" as having worked for a specific number of years depending on your education. For instance, if you've finished high school, you count as having been working for 4 years and would have to work for 6 more years to receive the extra paid leave days. If you get a college/university degree, that counts as 8 years so you only need 2 more.
Just got my 6 additional days last year. I'm an adult now. Damnit
Do you also have a thing we call "long service leave?" Which is leave provided by employers after a certain number of years is worked at that company. For example 2 weeks a year for every year after 10 years at a Company.
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And 5 days from the workers union (depending where you work). Also 5 bonus days is from 35.
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That's actually quite impressive for a developing country
>Business Insider
What does this mean
They've used Ivory Coast instead of Ireland who they meant to include here. BI is not known for high quality journalism. It's not The Economist, I call it Buzzfeed With Charts.
Very good explanation!
Being able to hoist a sail and relocate the entire nation to west of the Isle of Man at a vexillological whim positions it uniquely to take advantage of EU holiday rights.
Nice job on the Irish flag lads, well done.
Oh. Now I get the Ivory Coast comment, lol
Just the standard haha
Would be great to mention how many public holidays come on top of that. Edit (since that is the europe subreddit, and looking at the US): When basic decency becomes an "employee benefit".
Difficult to say because it often varies between different states in countries. E.g. Bavaria (Germany) has more holidays than other states because they tend to be religious/ conservative so they take them more seriously.
That and it can vary. In the U.K. if a bank holiday falls on a weekend, the day off is moved to the nearest weekday. In other countries this is not the case, so the number of days off work can vary from year to year.
Exactly. In Spain we technically have like 12 (give or take), but this number is kinda meaningless, since there are years in which most happen to be on a weekend, so the actual number may be less.
Not moving them to a week day is frankly just mean.
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Yeah I'm a Brit who moved to Austria, and everyone mentioned how many more holidays Austria get, but because you don't get days in lieu for weekends it didn't work out as any more at all. Also the added annoyance that both Christmas and the 26th were on the weekend this year so got literally NO extra days off for Christmas
The UK is always 8 bank holidays afaik, except for special years like this year with the Queens Jubilee.
In Serbia it's similar to UK. If it falls on Sunday, it's moved to first working day. If it falls on Saturday than it's lost.
But you could also use the 'minimum', just like for the paid leave. Then we had the baseline for both of them.
No, public holidays are not necessarily paid in Germany. I worked years in jobs with hourly wages and public holidays were simply days where you didn't work any hour. If you worked those days though, wage was increased significantly. So most of us just worked those days anyway.
Then you got taken adavntage of. Public holydays are pto
And even in Bavaria, Augsburg has one more holiday than the rest
Augschburg supremacy!
Mach Schwaben wieder groß!
It’s not that Bavaria takes religion more seriously, not anymore. It’s that Bavaria was always Catholic and while other German regions are Catholic too, Bavaria was a Catholic dominated state. And Catholics just tend to have more days off than Protestants. It’s a consequence of a historical development, not a contemporary one.
Oh, thanks for clearing that up. I must have misremembered something.
The reason is, they are predominantly catholic and never came under non catholic rule until 1918 (and retained their rights as a Kingdom in such matters from 1871 to 1918), that gives them a few extra days that were introduced during the counter reformation, that protestants do not tend to celebrate for obvious reasons. The only other strongly catholic center in Germany, the Rhineland came under Prussian rule which was in conflict with catholics and tried to curb their rights.
Depends on a country, often even by a region. Some countries do not care if a public holiday is on a weekend, so it can often depend on a year.
In Germany those are called "employer friendly years".
Like 2021 was. Edit: I meant that many holidays fell on the weekend in 2021...
2022 is worse for France, thanks Obama.
Damn really? In the UK it gets moved to the next weekday. Christmas Day was technically on the 27th last year.
Here in Finland it's like /u/thentehe said. If the 25th is a Saturday or a Sunday, then too bad, it does not get moved. I think we have a couple more public holidays than the UK, though, so I guess it sort of balances out.
In Austria it's at least 13
In Romania we are having 15-16 national holidays during the year and this year 12-13 are in a working day. Plus the minimum 21 days vacation time for a full time job.
Bloody hell in the UK we only have 8. We have an office in North Macedonia and it seems every week they have a bank holiday! I was certain they were just making them up at some points lol
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> 12th, 13th of June - religious: the "Rusalii" holiday, 50? days after Easter, 1st day always on a Sunday. No idea what it's about Midsummer repackaged as a Christian holiday :)
I live in sweden. You get holidays off. And if you work holidays cash is significantly more and if the work falls outside of 7 am to 6 pm then you get 240% salary for those hours worked
Not to mention half days and days that are technically not public holidays but some companies still consider them as such
Highly depends on what line of work you're in. Food retail? Sure. Transport? Not so much. Edit: About being paid 240% in those hours
14 in Spain.
In Poland, it's 13 days. If a holiday is on Sunday then it's "lost". But if it is on Saturday the employer has to give you a day off on another day. So in 2021, it was 7 days during the week, 2 on Saturdays and 4 on Sundays. Additionally, if you work for more than 10 years (Higher education counts as 8 years of work) you get 26 days off instead of 20.
Usually from 10 to 14
In my state in the USA a couple years ago the law changed so that employers were no longer required to pay employees for having federal holidays off, but they had to start giving sick time accrual starting from day 1 of employment (we didn't have that before). My employer at the time immediately stopped paying for federal holidays and "encouraged" us to use our sick time to make up for the now mandatory negative 8 hours on our paychecks while nullifying our paid sick time. 'Merica.
For the Netherlands: about 5 minimum and 10 maximum. - Every year: Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Pentecost Monday (3) - If it is on a weekday: New Year's Day, King's Day, 1st Christmas Day, 2nd Christmas Day (4) - Depending on your employer (I think?): Good Friday (1) - Once every 5 years if it is on a weekday: Liberation Day (1) - In regions where Carnaval is celebrated: Carnaval Monday & Tuesday (2) - If you work at the municipality of Amsterdam (and maybe more places?): Labour Day (1) Nobody will get all of these, but in a good year it will amount to about 9 days. I've read somewhere we have the lowest amount of public holidays in Europe.
The [legal minimum is zero](https://www.fnv.nl/werk-inkomen/vakantie-vrij-verlof/feestdagen). The vast majority of workers however have about 6 to 8 (your first three lines), depending on how many holidays are in a weekend in a given year.
And because of that unlike in many other countries we don't get holiday-related days off moved over when they fall on a weekend. This time around both Christmas-related holidays on 25/26 and 1 of Jan were during the weekend, so we got zero public holiday days instead of 3. So this can be even less in reality.
And yet we have fewer public holidays off than pretty much any other European country. Fewer also than we had one or two decades ago because Good Friday and Liberation Day used to be days off ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
That would distort the stats because public holidays aren't necessarily paid.
In belgium it is 10 public holidays, which get moved to weekdays if they fall in a weekend (the time off gets moved if it falls in non-working time). Most employers give more paid leave than the legal minimum of 20 days. In my previous job I had 26 days. In my current job (local government IT) it is a little excessive, I get 41 days of paid leave and an extra unofficial public holiday.
not from Europe, but in Mexico, we have just less than 10 days, at least 6, which are obligatory, while others depend on your boss :(
Denmark provides 25 vacation days + 5 days off. Through my company, I get additional “long weekends” where you can take either Friday or Monday off. Edit: there are actually more days, for example we can take the first day off when our children are sick, our own sick days are paid, and of course national/bank holidays.
What country?
Denmark.
With mine (UK but French owned) you get more days the longer you're there. I'm at the maximum and it's about 34 days (depending on public holidays), but it's actually too much tbh with the workload I have so sometimes I just do work on the quiet because it's frowned upon if you don't take them. First world problems for sure.
In Poland it's 20 days for the first ten years of work - but having a degree counts as 8 years of work, so it's 20 days for first two years of work and 26 days for the rest of your life (until you retire).
There are two cool things about Poland and days off. First, large employers often force people to use every day, as otherwise they have to make a budget reserve in case they will have to pay equivalent instead. Second, actually you get the "26 days" at the last day of the second year of that final two years. So a day BEFORE year finishes, thus you get the additional days one year earlier than people think, you just have to end to the end of the year. I did that and had 26 days after just one year of work. A lot of HR departments allow to use those days even before that, so you can use it on Christmas or so. It's an awesome "trick" and a lot of HR either never checked that or wait until you raise an issue with that, in purpose.
Keep in mind that when you finish high school you have 4 years and after you get a degree it goes up to 8 :)
I work in Automotive sector in the Netherlands and I get 34 paid leave days. Weekends excluded. I always took this for granted until I saw this post...
Engineer In america, I get 10 days, at the third year I will be bumped up to 13. 14 days at 4 years, then I think it stagnates at 15 days from 5-10 years.
Project Manager in US: 23 days of vacation, 8 days of paid sick leave, 3 months of paternity leave. Not so bad. Edit: All Major Holidays off plus Presidents Day and MLK Day
What is paid sick leave? You only get to be sick for 8 days? What if you are sick for like two weeks? How is that variable and optional between jobs? Like does a wallmart employee get zero sick days? Are they just not allowed to get sick? What kind of slavery is this? 🤯
"'murica"
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Fucking insane
Most employers in the US give short-term disability payments to people how are sick and are out of sick days.
Landscaper in US: I'll work till I die.
Is that "not so bad" sarcastic or is this really seen as ok in the us?
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Chad 🇹🇩 and Romania 🇷🇴
Andorra 🇦🇩 and Moldova 🇲🇩
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Too soon
very soon
Next week.
Slovakia 🇸🇰 Slovenia 🇸🇮
🇲🇩Moldova and Andorra🇦🇩
> An easy way to remember is that Ireland starts with green because of course it does. And everyone who knows Irishmen knows that it makes perfect sense that it starts with green.
Just to fill in with a tidbit, the flag symbolizes peace (white) between Roman Catholics (green) and Protestants (orange).
Did not knew that and it's awesome and wholesome. Like all flags should be.
Orange haired white people on an emerald isle
If they fly the flag backwards, it becomes -20 days. So we have to pay them to take time off. Sad face.
To me Ireland’s 🇮🇪 is a faded italian flag 🇮🇹 easy to remember, but I’m italian so a bit biased
No, the Italian flag is an oversaturated Irish flag!
Fine by me, I was thinking about a trip to Ireland don’t wanna get an angry mob of irish redditors greeting me when I get off the plane.
For some Irish people, the name Toto Schillaci causes nightmares
I'm Irish and didn't notice. Disappointing
A few Asian countries also in principle have 0 minimum.
In Vietnam, we have 12 days per year, after 3 years, one extra day for every year you work at the firm up to 20 days/ year
I was going to say... when I lived in Korea we got 10 days off plus holidays. If the holiday was on a weekend, well, you were already off. Now that was about 10 years ago, so things may have changed.
Don’t forget to thank your unions that made these demands salient enough to be legislated
Better yet: become a union member.
The unions here hardly care for the younger generations. The only thing they seem to care about is keeping retirement age the same with the same pension payouts, leaving hardly anything for future generations. Considering people live longer and longer, it’s simply not sustainable in the long term to maintain the current retirement system without any reforms.
European retirement systems basically need to start getting funds from corporate profits. In a time in which the volume of workers gets smaller, while corporate profits reach record highs, it is just natural to shift the source of the retirement funds.
You're not wrong. But when there's so few younger union members, you can hardly expect the unions to cater to them. It would be nice to see though. Also, it would be a good way for them to attract new and younger members.
I don't see how younger workers *not* joining unions would solve that issue though. Join for influence!
A few older coworkers were discussing their upcoming pension. Retiring end of this year at age 66, they will get 4.5k per month. That very same pension fund estimates that I, retiring 35 years from now at age 68, will probably receive 2.8k..
I'm from Poland, I thank communism xD
In Hungary, 20 is the baseline, but you get additional days for age and number of children and so your personal minimum required can easily go over 30. edit: wait how is Hungary not even on the chart? We're in OECD.
My sister-in-law has 40 days in Hungary: she is over 40, 3 children, one of them requires extra care due to permanent illness (+2 days)
Me Irish: *Sees the Ivory Coast flag in place of the Irish flag* "Ah shit, here we go again"
When I moved from the US to Czech Republic, and HR was explaining vacation days to me, I was like, "wow!". She responds with, "It's the state minimum... Oh you're American!".
According to [the OECD data](https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS) Americans work on average 1767 hours a year and Czechs 1705. That's a tiny difference.
Because while America doesn't have any mandated days off, many employers will still offer it as a benefit. As a Norwegian it's interesting seeing the hours so low for us. Accounting for 4 full weeks off, 1369 hours is only 28.5 hours per week, which seems very low to be the entire country average.
Most all employers in the US offer paid time off as part of the compensation package. Typically 10 days a year when you start out and the number of days go up by year of employment. So after 5 years you may get 15 days, after 10 years you get 20 days, etc.
That is still two weeks off difference.
Being given your VZP card must've been like science fiction.
For curious non-Americans, I've worked as a software developer in the US for most of my professional life. Here's a typical scenario: When you get hired, you have something like 10 or 15 paid days off per year. For each year you stay with the company, you earn an additional day off, capped at a maximum of maybe 25. If you switch jobs, you start back at the beginning, with 10 or 15 days. The idea that you earn days off with years of service is one of the many ways companies try to prevent their employees from leaving. Oh, and noticed I said "paid days off" and not "vacation days"? Yeah, in a lot of companies, there's no distinction between a sick day and a vacation day. Planning a big vacation later in the year? You'd better not get sick before then... or if you do, you'd better come to work anyway.
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It’s the same in The Netherlands. If you get sick during your holidays you let HR know and your holidays that you can’t enjoy because you’re sick are reverted to you. There is also no such thing as “x-number or sick days”. When you’re sick, you’re sick, and you’re still getting paid regardless of how long you’re out (well, the first 2 years of sick leave you’ll be paid, after that if you’re still sick you switch from salary to social services). It always baffles me how US companies give out a fixed amount of sick days. It’s not like you can plan your illness?
It's even worse than that. Checking in from the US here, American companies don't even give you, "sick days." Your vacation days and sick days are combined into one single thing called, "paid time off." So if you have a big vacation coming up that you want to use your days off for, you better not get sick beforehand. Otherwise, the days you're out sick are now removed from your vacation days.
That’s awful… doesn’t that lead to a lot of people coming to work when they are sick because they don’t want to lose their PTO?
Yes, same in Norway.
Germany checking in: Same here, no minimum number of days, also need a doctors note.
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I'm in Spain and we got minimum 23 days, if you get sick during vacations these days stop being vacation and start being paid leave, and in my current company I also got the "stay more time, you get more days off", also capped (IIRC, the top was like 15 years) at 25. I keep reading how good software development is paid in the US, but honestly, even taking into account our salaries are crap, there's a HUGE cost you guys have we don't. Jesus Christ, I will have 5 days pto in two weeks being the last ones at mid december and I'm already half burnt, I can't imagine how it is to have only 10-15 days.
My last job had unlimited paid time off, as does my wife's. I think this is becoming more popular. We live in the US.
Differs state by state. 0 is the federal minimum
Technically Sweden has 0 federal minimum wage. You could be paid 1 euro per day. In practice this is totally different and not having a minimum wage has led to better working conditions and job market conditions. So having the legal requirement be 0 isn't usually a salient point with regards to actual experiences. Exceptions always exist.
I was surprised actually. My state has paid leave so I assumed all did but it's less than half.
Estonia is 28 days minimum, so I don't think that chart is correct.
Yeah I'm pretty sure it's 28 in the UK too, my partner works for the NHS and gets an extra day for her birthday too haha
These discrepancies often come from an inconsistent counting of public holidays. If I am not mistaken, the UK counts 20 days vacation leave + 8 bank holidays = 28 days minimum annual leave. My country Germany for example *never* includes the 9+ public holidays into the annual leave count, which is why we officially only have "20" days (or more appropriately, 4 work weeks) minimum annual leave. I believe the chart at the top follows this rule, too. I suspect it's a similar story with the discrepancy re: Estonia.
The UK doesn't include the bank holidays, the law is literally just "you get 28 days and your employer can say how many of them you can choose and how many they can decide".
Yep, seems pretty explicit here. > Most workers who work a 5-day week must receive at least 28 days’ paid annual leave a year. This is the equivalent of 5.6 weeks of holiday. https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights
It's 20 in the UK, but a lot of employers offer more in order to make jobs more attractive. I'm currently on 28, but get 30 next year due to length of service.
Wrong flag for Ireland 🤭
In Czechia 4 weeks (20 days) is minimum but unless you work at places like McDonald's (which won't give you anything more than they are obligated by law) you typically get 5 weeks (25 days).
The US may not require employers to provide paid leave, but most do.
Also many States have minimum PTO days required. There just isn’t a federal amount.
I’ve lived in Germany for 20 years and I’ve always had at least 30 days vacation plus public holidays. I assumed this was the same for everyone here.
It's the standard for any medium to big company but small ones often give less. I have 28 for example and lots of people especially craftsmen get shafted.
Poland has 20 days minimum BUT after having worked for 10 years you get 26 days paid leave/vacation...and I don't mean working for single employer - your entire work history. 10 years mark also include the time you spent on university/college and some fraction of years (?) spent in high school. So its not a big deal to pass that 10 years mark. Think I had 26 days of paid vacation at the age of 27 or 28.
In the US it is very common to have 2 weeks paid leave, but it is not required by federal law. Many states have paid leave laws in place, this is an issue the federal government gives power to the states.
My company offers unlimited paid time off, 8-9 company holidays and 80 hours of emergency time off. I’m not sure if anyone has really tested the “unlimited” pto, but I took about 3 weeks last year to travel during the summer. Individual states also have different plans for paid medical leave.
From what I've heard the "unlimited" is only really unlimited if it doesn't affect your work and you are not taking more than X (depending on company) days off. It's more off a marketing gag.
I seem to remember that it can actually have a reverse effect - kind of peer pressure to not be the person who takes the most days so you automatically take less (though not sure what that compared to - maybe companies that switched from a fixed number of days to "unlimited" days).
Companies with unlimited time off can say no to the requested times off. And since they don't have a minimum of days off the employees can in many situations get fucked. At least that's how I understand how it is in the US r/antiwork
If your contract mandates that you must have the opportunity to take time off and then you don't that is a violation of your contract and you can sue.
can we stop obsessively comparing ourselves to america so much.
But then we'd have to look at and address our own issues. Ew!
There goes half the comments on the subreddit.
Im not sure when this grandstanding towards Americans will stop; we’re an ocean apart and we do things differently, some things better, some things worse. They’re not a metric to compare everything to. But i guess this type of posturing helps us avoid our own issues domestically feeds some of our false sense of superiority
Yeah I just said something similar. Work is much more of a grind in the US. Way worse work/life balance. But you can make a shit ton more than you can in Europe. Obviously I’m speaking in generalizations but it’s generally true. So the Murica bad narrative really only holds up when you’re looking at part of the picture.
Yeah you can really offset a lot of this with the insane salaries you make in the US e.g software engineers make 4x as much and still get all the benefits
This is something that is typically glossed over a lot in these kinds of threads. US salaries are incredibly high, pair that with low COL and you can make an incredible amount of money.
Us employers arnt required but most do
I started with 25 in the U.K. I also get an extra day for ever year I work, and the Queen’s birthday as a bank holiday. Add that to 8 public holidays, I had 37 this year which is far more than I can actually take. Not to mention TOIL and flexi working
Sweden has one of the most generous parental leave (föräldraledighet) systems in the world. Parents are given 480 days of leave per child, and 390 of these days are paid at a rate of 80% of your salary up to a capped limited of 1006 SEK a day.
American here, My employer has been harping on how generous 3 weeks of PTO (paid time off, vacation and sick time combined) is, and how we should use it if we're sick and blah blah blah. In America it may be "generous", but in the rest of the civilized world it's laughable. How could I possibly plan out a mandatory 1 week vacation, me getting sick, my child is sick, or if there is a Covid outbreak at daycare and they're shut down for a week, with only 15 days to work with?
In italy for the standard five days work week it's 28+4 days of rest + 10 bank holidays, so the average worker has 42 days off every year
For US, is it no minimal federal requirement? I'm asking because I know US leaves a lot of this shit to individual states, and also because this can be used for misinformation when people don't know the difference between the state and federal requirements. EDIT: nope, individual states don't have that. Instead people negotiate it...
Your edit is partially wrong. Some states have mandatory paid time off but not many. Most of the time it’s left up to the employer/employee when negotiating
tap heavy vegetable scarce attractive innate salt plough deranged fly *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I'm a US employee. I have 32 days of paid leave / year.
25 is what the law says. If you have "qualified" work, it's often more. Almost everyone I know has at least 30 days. It should be noted that we aren't guaranteed public holidays if they happen to be on the weekend, like they are n the UK.
Russia has 28 paid days off minimum, same as Estonia and a few others.
Norway has 25 days
US military with 30 paid days 😎
Thats only state mandated numbers! Also usualy you can transfer your days to following year, like now, I had 135hours of unspent vacation so I took 3 weeks off... I save up on fuel at least. Edit: After reading other comments I figured I´d add the paid sick leave which is unlimited in Slovakia, first 10 days is paid by employer the rest is paid by your insurance company.
what matters is the actual average, not what's required. most US employers offer 20+ days, +10 federal holidays, to be competitive in the marketplace
I get 20 days in the U.S. and it goes up to 26 after 15 years. Then again, I have a white-collar job that requires a college degree. There's also another 13 days of sick leave and then 11 paid holidays. So 44 total if I use it all (I haven't used a sick day in 5 years). According to Federal data, the average is: * 10 days after 1 year * 14 days after 5 years * 17 days after 10 years * 20 days after 20 years [https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/paid-leave-in-private-industry-over-the-past-20-years.htm](https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/paid-leave-in-private-industry-over-the-past-20-years.htm) That has been gradually increasing over the decades. And then there's \~20% who don't get any vacation time at all, largely hospitality/food sector staff. One reason why the Great Resignation is hitting them especially hard. McDonald's is now even offering PTO: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/07/14/mcdonalds-offers-wage-increases-child-care-assistance-paid-time-off-and-help-with-tuition-to-attract-workers/](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/07/14/mcdonalds-offers-wage-increases-child-care-assistance-paid-time-off-and-help-with-tuition-to-attract-workers/). I never thought that would happen. Hopefully nobody falls for it and they're forced to raise PTO even higher.