vacation time ?

[rbailleu]

I realize its ambiguous, and we solved it by changing the wording to days.

2 weeks vaction does that mean 14 days. or 10 days

to me 14 days would be like almost 3 weeks paid off.

what does your company do.

 

[mattbeals]

Two weeks vacation in my past jobs has mean 10 working days.

 

[Joe]

Same here everywhere I have worked...2 weeks vacation = 10 working days...or being a 4 day week that I am on, it equals 8 working days.

 

[oxburger]

Same. 2 "business" weeks. 10 days. But a lot of companies are changing terminology to a more ambiguous "PTO - personal time off" to avoid the legislation that an employee has to have a certain amount of allowable "sick" days. By calling all time off "PTO" and not defining certain days as "sick" and certain days as "vacation" they're able to be in compliance with the law without essentially having to add "sick" days to meet the regulations.

 

[Cory Smith]

10 working days...never heard it as 14 working days.

 

[CD102]

If you are running a 5 day per week schedule, it means 10 paid days off, but generally most employees expect to get the entire week off with the weekend being unpaid. Depending on your work week, that's Sunday through Saturday or Monday through Sunday. If you happen to schedule work for the weekend of the vacation, you shouldn't expect the person on vacation to show up for it. Well, I suppose you could, but my last employer never did.

Now that I am working continuous run, I get 80 hours of vacation. You get 7 days off in a row by scheduling two vacation days for the middle of the week where you are scheduled for a 3-day weekend. And since continuous run is 12 hour days and 80 is not evenly divisible by 12, you end up with 6 full days of vacation and getting paid for only part of a seventh or you just cash in the left over hours at the end of the year.

My last employer didn't pay only 40 hours pay , but 2% of the last year's gross for each week's vacation with 40 hours pay being the minimum. If you worked a lot of overtime, you received a substantial increase over a 40 hour check.

 

[rbailleu]

thanks everyone. my mother recently retired and used to let one individual tell her how many days vacation she had coming. so we actually started keeping track of the days and said no more carry over use it or get paid for it. some interesting vacation plans out there though.

cd102 on that 2% on gross deal. so if you worked 2500 hours you got 50 hours vacation is that how I read it. or 40 hours + 50 hours or something entirely different.

 

[CD102]

cd102 on that 2% on gross deal. so if you worked 2500 hours you got 50 hours vacation is that how I read it. or 40 hours + 50 hours or something entirely different.

Vacation time was based on years of service, but pay was based on the amount of money you earned the year before. The basic assumption is that one week is approximately equal to 1/50th or 2% of a year. So if you worked a lot of overtime and made say $50,000 in the previous year, you would be paid $1000 for each week's vacation you were entitled to taking. If you didn't work much overtime and made only $35,000 then you would be paid only $700 for each week's vacation. If for some reason you didn't work a lot hours the year before (layoff, sick leave, etc.) you were guaranteed 40 hours pay at your current rate of pay.

It was a nice way to reward people who worked a lot of hours, but I doubt if many places do it. I made a lot more than 40 hours pay when I took my vacations.

 

[rbailleu]

that does sound like a pretty neat system. did they also give some sort of xmas bonus. or only pay the extra vacation money.

 

[CD102]

that does sound like a pretty neat system. did they also give some sort of xmas bonus. or only pay the extra vacation money.

Extra pay for vacations only, Christmas bonus consisted of a $50 gift certificate and a frozen turkey. It was a union shop so there were no performance bonuses or the like. Does anyone give performance bonuses these days?

 

[oldschool]

We get a year end bonus and a ham.... mmm ham.
We just had an adjustment with vacation time due to abuse. What is your requirement for advance request? We now have to put in for a vacation day 1 month in advance. Not going over too well.

 

[rbailleu]

we are a small company so its not that big an issue, but I can see it might be an issue in a large company. if 10 people decided to go on vacation on friday for the whole next week. you might lose a whole shift in bindery for the week

 

[oldschool]

Thought 1 month was extreme. I guess it is just everyone paying for the abuse of a few (calling out and asking to use a vacation day).

 

[CD102]

At my old plant, we had to give 48 hours notice to take a vacation day. We had forms we had to fill in, those had to be sent to payroll to verify we still had vacation days available, then the supervisors asked/forced people to cover. Originally it required 72 hours notice.

As always, there were limitation to how many people could have off at the same time. At our plant, for some reason, they decided that for single day vacations that the first requests would be honored if multiple people applied and coverage was available. That gave a huge advantage to the night shift, so it was changed so that everyone had until so many hours into their shift to make the request and all things being equal that the senior person would get priority. The thing that really made it a pain was that you couldn't request a single day more than 7 days in advance even if you knew six months in advance that you needed to attend a wedding or graduation ceremony.

Now at my new plant, we get to take our birthdays as paid holidays. And you can use it within a 2 week window on either side of the actual date. I gave my supervisor more than a week's notice and got denied. Oh well.

But that brings up what do companies do when an employee cannot give advance notification? For example, the birth of a child? Or a death in the family? A car accident? Or a medical emergency?

 

[gordo]

But that brings up what do companies do when an employee cannot give advance notification? For example, the birth of a child? Or a death in the family? A car accident? Or a medical emergency?

Your employer is not responsible for your inability to schedule your life.
With a child you have 9 months notice. A death in the family? Heck we're all going to die - it's not a surprise. That's why you have life insurance so that you can plan for it. A car accident? No such thing. Bad driving will result in a crash - you know it and so does your insurance company. No surprise there either. A medical emergency? Well, your employer knows, just as you do, that they only happen on certain occasions like Superbowl Sunday, Fridays or Mondays to get a long weekend off. Entirely predictable.

With tongue firmly in cheek - gordo

 

[CD102]

I tried to convince my former employer that the day after the Super Bowl should be a paid holiday. Surely we could have traded some other holiday for it. Absenteeism after the Super Blow was 30% or more on the midnight shift, a good 15% on the day shift.

 

[jocas]

wooow.. to relax huh.. good for you!!