How vacations works in your country ?

In Norway we got it like you, only 6 weeks paid. The paycheck is higher than usually though (12,5% of your yearly salary).
If you start in a new job like you, you get paid the 12,5% by your FORMER employer which you get when you quit the job. The first year of your new job you only have to right to take 2 weeks off unpaid.

Ps: Hard to explain!

 

It feels like you have more "red" days (holidays), though

 

I think it depends on the job here. There isn't really a set holiday allowance.

 

Here in Canada, typically you start with 2 weeks vacation and then after a certain # of year you get 3 (after 5 years) and then 4 weeks (after 10 years). It is almost unheard of to get more than 4 weeks paid vacation. Unless you are a teacher.

Vacation also typically accrues on a monthly basis (eg, 1.2 days per month).

We also have about 10 civic or provincial holidays throughout the year that are in addition to paid vacation:
in Sept we have a Labour Day;
Thanksgiving in October;
Christmas (Dec 25) and Boxing Day (Dec 26);
New Year's Day (Jan 1),
in Alberta we have a Family Day in February;
Easter in March or April (most businesses here only give Good Friday and not Easter Monday);
May long weekend (Victoria Day);
Canada Day (July 1st);
August long weekend

Many businesses allow non-Christians to work Christmas and Easter and take other religious holiday days instead.

 

I work for a City University and as a city employee we earn our vacation days as we work throughout the year. Every month we earn approx. 2.5 days...And we can use them whenever we want as long as your supervisor approves your vacation. And usually you will only be approve for 2-3 wks at a time, unless you have extreme circumstances(i.e. death in family, sickness in family) and need to take more time.

But we do have tons of holidays off throughout the year...so I can't complain much. I also get Fridays off in the Summer because the University is closed on Fridays.

 

I think in the US it depends a lot on the company you work for since they set their own vacations policies. My husband doesn't have any paid vacations days with his company right now. Here in California we are just really thankful he has a job. I work for a school district but work more days per year than teachers which means I have less vacation.

 

My husband is the same as Alli. He doesn't get paid vacations. My husband is an electrician and even though we live in California, right now he is up in Alaska working because there is very little work here. When we take a vacation, it is without pay. I only work part time, so I don't get vacation time either. I just take off when I need it, but again, without pay.

 

I work for the state government and we get I believe it is 10 paid state holidays (christmas, new years, etc.) and then you earn both sick and paid time off for each pay period you are in the job. And then as long as it is approved, you can take your time.

 

We are in Austrailia and I think it is usually 3-4 weeks here.

My husband gets 30 days a year which might seem like a lot but if he goes to sea he can be working up to 20 hours a day.

 

Yeah - I live in the USA and my husband gets 3 weeks vacay paid. He just went from 2 weeks to 3 weeks because he's been with the same company now for 10 years. I work part time and get no paid vacation, but I take days off occasionally and just don't get paid!

 

I'm in the US and my last job in the first year I had 20 days personal time off plus i think 5 days of sick leave annually I could use (the sick leave carried over the pto didn't if I remember correctly) ... the job I had before had 1 week paid vacation my first year there..so there are huge differences depending on company. DH gets about 25 days vacation time (7.5 hrs per 2 week pay period) and 7 paid holidays. He used to get two paid floating holidays (which he could take whenever...so they were really like extra vacation days) but they did away with that this year. It is almost totally unheard of to get 5 wks paid time off in the US so he's extremely lucky.

DH's paid holidays are (if I didn't miss any)-
New Year's Day (jan 1)
Memorial Day (last monday in may)
Independence Day (july 4)
Labor Day (first monday in september)
Thanksgiving (2 days) (4th thursday in november and the following friday)
Christmas Day (dec 25)

 

My hubby has it pretty good too. He is German military and I believe he gets like 36 paid days a year plus like 12 days extra because we have kids (which we can save up in a 'vacation acct' to use later and they don't expire till the kids are 18 which is nice). Of course finding the time to actually use the days is the hard part. I think he has 85 days yet unused or something like that. But we will use quite a bit making this move in November so I guess it's good that we have it.

Oh and it seems like Germany has a BUNCH of holidays each year too.

 

For me it sounds insane that companies can decide how many days you get off (paid).
In Norway the government has decided the the number.

Oh man, I just love our country

 

Christine, don't you also have a very generous maternity leave?

Here in Canada we get basically a year for maternity leave (this has dramatically increased over the last 15 years). About 2/3 of the time we are paid about a third of our salary (paid from the government). Some companies (not mine!) top up to the full salary amount. And a company cannot give our job away during that year (although they can hire a temp to fill the position while we're gone).

 

John only gets one paid week of vacation during the year, and they don't roll over. (So if he doesn't take a vacation this year that doesn't mean he gets 2 weeks next year) Also since he works on commission he doesn't get paid sick days either. And after experiencing one vacation pay while on commission this year I think he'll probably try to avoid it. He only brought home like $500 whereas he usually brings home a lot more.