In article <fpa2ot$79i$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Keith F.
Lynch) wrote:
> Marcus L. Rowland <forgottenfutures@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > Keith F. Lynch <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >> Almost nobody in the US gets that much leave. Two weeks paid
> >> vacation is typical. Some get three weeks. Many get no paid
> >> vacation at all.
>
> > Ouch. I'm on 33 days plus weekends and public holidays, a newcomer
> > at my place starts on 23 days going up to 28 fairly quickly.
>
> To clarify, you're in the UK, right?
>
> Nearly everyone in the US does get weekends off, or an equivalent
> number of weekdays. There are, I think, ten federal holidays, and
> most office workers get most or all of them off. There are also
> various state holidays in various states. A fair percentage of
> workers in Virginia get Lee/Jackson day off, as that's a state
> holiday here.
And to clarify a point that Marcus may or may not have been making,
leave entitlement in the UK is given in days, not weeks. Therefore, 30
days leave means six weeks, possibly more if there's a bank holiday
involved. For instance, I often wanted to take off the last week in
August and the first week in September, but the last Monday in August
is a Bank Holiday in England and therefore meant taking only nine days
leave.
My company could actually force you to take two weeks holiday each year
in the summer as part of the staff agreement. I can't remember how it
was actually worded and whether taking only nine days with a bank
holiday actually counted. I never heard of it being enforced, but at
the end of my first summer working there, my boss did tactfully point
out that I hadn't taken a proper holiday yet. However, I had already
planned something for the end of September, so nothing further
happened.
Conversely, if you wanted to take more than two weeks holiday at a time,
you had to get permission, but I did that a few times without problem.
You could also carry over leave days if you didn't use your total
entitlement in a year. Our leave year ran from 1st February to 31st
January. (When I started, it was from April to March, but as that
meant you could end up with two Easters or no Easters in a leave year,
and people often wanted time off around Easter, they changed the start
date.) If at the end of January, you hadn't used all your entitlement,
the extra days were added to the next year's entitlement. (I think you
needed permission if that was more than five days.)
We actually had leave sheets. A leave sheet was a piece of A5 paper
with your name and payroll number at the top, with your total leave
entitlement for the year. Each time you wanted to take some leave, you
filled in the dates and number of days involved (including half days,
if you wanted) and got your manager to sign it.
My retirement date was the end of March, which meant I still got the
leave entitlement for the two months I worked in the 2004 leave year.
My entitlement was quite large by then, as you got an extra day for
every five years you'd worked for the company, and I'd done 30 years.
I think I was up to about 38 days leave a year by then. I ended up
working four-day weeks for most of the final months.
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