this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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I've never worked a single job in the US that didn't have sick and vacation hours. Granted it was like 5 seconds allowed every 7 years but still.
Neither of them are actually a legal requirement. What is offered is basically part of the "compensation package" (it's considered part of your pay) in the US. Also there are A LOT of jobs in the US that don't give paid sick time or vacation time, they are usually pretty far down the hierarchy though, and the jobs that do give paid time off typically don't give it to you until you have been employed there for at least a year.
I don't think this graphic is stating you cannot get any of these things in the US, but none of these things are guaranteed by the government.
At least Illinois requires 40hr of pto/yr
Shit that's crap. That includes all sick days and emergency care of dependents, and bosses get arsey if you take any holiday, right?
Yup. Plus many workplaces have a points system for tardiness or calling off.
Late by 5 minutes = 1/2 point and 5/6 points you're fired. Points drop off after one year.
There's something called FMLA (family medical leave act) which you can use to take additional time off to care for a family member, but it's unpaid.
Uuuuuhhhhh. Then you have 0 pto/y.
They automatically take your PTO if you call in or are late and you must exhaust your PTO before you can take FMLA. Yeah.
That's awful.
Yeah, that's why Americans are pissed off all the time.
40 hours? For real?
UK'er here. I get 230 hours of annual leave per year, fully paid. I pay less tax and national insurance on days off, so I actually earn more for not being at work, go figure. 6 months sick at full pay, 6 months at half pay. 4-day week, 36 hours.
When you factor in weekends and bank holidays, I work a grand total of 175 days per year.
As a percentage of the entire hours in a year, I spend just under 19% of them at work. It feels like so much more, but you guys, man, you have it so much worse.
America, land of the free? My arse.
They just passed that last year. Other states have no requirements to offer you any kind of time off. It's up to you to figure this stuff out when you apply for a job. They generally put some info in the job ad, but it's usually vague. "Two weeks vacation" "health, dental, vision insurance" 401k.
That doesn't tell you anything because there are too many variables to consider. Some companies make you take an entire day off, others have Paid Time Off hours that accrue at a certain rate depending on how long you've been working there, some require you to take at least a certain amount off at a time, some let you use a single hour. Health insurance is a minefield, could be a high deductible plan with a deductible and then you pay a percentage up to your out of pocket max. Sometimes the individual cost is minimal and then jumps considerably for dependents. Dental can cover certain things and not others. Sometimes they will only match your retirement contributions at 50% up to 6% sometimes they'll match them dollar for dollar.
It's a system that makes it difficult to leave a shitty job.
Part time workers rarely get any benefits.
28 vacation days/y + holidays. I think 38 pto/y total. In post-Soviet Russia. USSA can't manage be on par with Russia.
That's just a minimum. Some work places give you more, some don't.
But yeah, it's bullshit.
i dont even have sick hours anymore its all pto. so if i get sick i just lose my vacation
Then you don't have pto either.
Yeah that's a change that kinda sucks. If I'm sick just don't pay me for that day. Don't take it outta my vacation funds lol
my company used to do that but now that they went corporate if i call in sick and dont have vacation i get a point if i get too many points i get fired. i already have 3 because i got sick in december. absolute horseshit
I hope you're able to find better work somewhere else man. That's total BS.
got an interview monday so heres hoping lol
Think bigger
Not exactly sure what you mean in this context. Should I think about taking bigger vacations?
I think they're saying that those conditions are still poor and you (as in everyone) should fight for more
Yeah that makes more sense.
Yeah the data all shows and has shown for a long time that people do better work and have better morale when companies treat them better. Unfortunately it costs the companies a little money so GET BACK TO WORK ~~SLAVE~~ EMPLOYEE I DONT CARE IF YOU GET EVERYONE AT WORK SICK.
I will never understand why bosses want me to come into work and potentially take out EVEN more of your staff with illness lol. Like yeah your short handed if I'm gone. You're gonna be even more short handed when all three of your customer service staff get sick Becky.
I used to work at a company that did this. White collar, but we would often work stat days, and we were salary. So our PTO was x days vacation time, y days stat days, and z days sick days. Vacation time was the legally mandated or higher, stat days were the legally mandated, and then sick days were on top of that (no legally mandated paid sick days where I live). If you got sick a lot (and actually didn't work anyway) you had less vacation time. If you didn't get sick a lot, you had more vacation time. If you worked some stat days, you had even more vacation time. It worked for everybody and meant there was no reason to worry if people were actually sick when they took a sick day - it was just unplanned PTO.
If you get additional PTO to allow for sick days, I'm not sure why you're complaining. That's a perspective issue. If you don't, I definitely get it.
i dont get any additional PTO for sick days, so its basically get lucky enough to not get sick or never take a day off
And many jobs also pay you health insurance. But the point is that in other countries, social security is not attached to your employment. If you get fired, you receive unemployment and health care until you get your next job (details and quality of social system vary per country though).
Even if you have a job that pays for health insurance, it's still not as good as a universal health system with a single payer. There's deductibles to pay. In Canada, if I need to go to the ER, my biggest financial concern is paying for parking.
And even if you eliminate the deductibles, it's still not as good as a public health system because you also need to worry about whether a provider is in network and then your insurance company can just deny coverage because their whole point is to profit and not doing what their stated purpose is is an easy way to make more profit.
There are different models. For example in Portugal and in the UK there's public health system where you have the right to health care as a citizen, and it's paid by social security, which is a tax on you income. In Germany you instead have mandatory insurance, but the government pays for you if you can't. This you pay a % of your salary but it's not considered a tax. In the end it's just different models of the same thing.
Eeeeh. Isn't UK mandatory insurance too?
Because it says as a citizen, not as a human being.
No, it's called national insurance, but that's just the name they gave it when they started the national health service, state pension, and welfare for those out of work for whatever reason. It's just taxation.
It's free healthcare, not mandatory insurance. Nobody has to ever deal with an insurance company and decisions about your healthcare aren't made by profit motive driven companies.
If it does not cover all people, regardless of citizenship and residence, then I call it mandatory health insurance. Yes, it is state-run, but for me covering tourists too should be requirement for healthcare to be called universal.
I didn't call it universal, I called it free. A lot of tourists are covered because of reciprocal agreements with their countries.
It's not mandatory health insurance because you're covered whether you've paid the tax or not, cradle to grave, and the original hypothecated payments haven't covered it for decades.
It's free healthcare. I disagree very strongly with some people having an immigration ruling that they have no recourse to public funds, but that doesn't mean it isn't free healthcare.
Derp. You indeed did not say universal. My bad.
Are the insurance providers in Germany public or for-profit private entities?
There are both. Most people are on the public insurance which is non profit. Rich people sometimes move to private insurance.
Me neither, but in the US a business is not required to offer paid sick or vacation time, so it stands to reason that some don't. Actually I take part of that back - as a software developer I have done contracts for agencies that did not offer either. Of course the pay rate for contracting is so high it didn't matter to me, but the fact is they didn't.
Well contract work is categorized different from "full time employment". I'm not saying it's right but I don't know of any contract gigs that give anything other than money.
Self employment is the big difference. There are agencies that deal with freelancers and others that hire people as employees and send them to client sites. I've worked for both kinds but when they offered benefits they weren't that great. I remember literally laughing out loud when I read one benefits brochure - the insurance cost like $3k a year and had an annual coverage ceiling of $7k. Maybe enough to cover one ambulance ride and ER visit lol.
Yeah I worked for a prestigious hospital years back, but through a contracting company so I couldn't even get medical from the hospital I worked at.
Eventually I got coverted over to an actual employee of the hospital, but I still couldn't afford their coverage because I wasn't making enough at the time lol.
Our medical industry is so fucked.
Our medical system is fucked, but the Freedom feels so great doesn't it?
Yeah, those bottom two are flat-out wrong. Now, if it said something like "generous paid sick leave/vacation," it remains correct.
No they aren't.
I've worked many jobs, mostly retail and food service that has no option for any pto, sick or otherwise.
If you wanted time off outside of your scheduled hours, you could try to switch shifts with someone, or get someone to cover your shift, or, depending on the company, ask them for unpaid time, some would sometimes allow that, some wouldn't.
How many frags did you make?
Right, but this chart it saying it doesn't exist at all. That's not true. "Universal" paid sick leave/vacation would be a better descriptor than "generous."