4 weeks is still not on par with other civilised countries. Living here in the UK now, 5 weeks is standard. When I was in the Netherlands I was getting six.
Know what really hurts?
Running into foreigners in your own city who tell you about how they’re on a multi-week vacation to America and they’ll probably do it again to another country again next year. I’ve had that happen multiple times while out at bars in my city.
Meanwhile, I’ve barely crossed state lines in my entire adulthood because it’s hard to even get a 3-4 day extended weekend.
America sucks y’all.
Join a union. I work part time in America. After just one year of working I had 3 weeks of vacation. After 3 I now have 4 weeks and am taking my 2nd international trip of the year and 3rd vacation trip of the year.
Or better yet, unionize your own workplace with vacations as the primary demand
Start paying people enough that they can actually live instead of struggling just to keep their heads above water.
Unfortunately the leading point of view from employers
Is that if an employee is happy with their job… THEY ARE NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH.
They feel that ONLY those who hate their jobs … are efficient
Don’t forget the healthy dose of salary and humane treatment.
Your premise is flawed in the first sentence - “Want happier employees?” No American employer cares about that in the least. Being happy at being allowed to keep their job and keep showing up to collect your meager pay is about all you can expect.
came in to comment effectively this., but you phrased it better than I would have.
“But happy employees naturally work harder” yeah, but so do desperate employees, and that also satisfies corpo desire for abusable slaves.
I would literally take a life for that work balance.
40-50hrs a week isn’t a life worth living
Ikr. I can’t even find time to go to gym cuz of commute. That alone just drains whatever energy I had left from the day and so I just scrap by with the few things I can do later in the evening. Sucks man.
The next ad you see: “The only device that lets you work-out, on your way-out, to work!”
A sad world indeed.
Wait,you guys don’t get that? Shit I’m.here in Northern Ireland and that would be less than standard. That’s what we give teenagers,hell,most teens would not take that deal. When did America start treating the worker so bad? Like 1865?
America was built on treating the worker badly. Most of the first people that came here were either slaves or indentured servants. Now we have prison slavery and wage servitude.
The only thing that has ever really improved in American labor is actual safety standards for work environments, equipment, etc. We do a great job of prioritizing that. But actual workers are viewed as expendable, and many of the largest employers are just meat grinders even if they offer half-decent benefits. Walmart is a good example of that
It’s such a bummer when I hear about the burial lack of workers rights over there. How is there not mass migration to Europe?
Because, for many people, it’s not all that easy to get the requisite visas to go to Europe legally. As it stands now, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in my household of 3 who has a few options to get skilled work visas based on my work experience. In another few years, when we’ve all finished our degrees, we’re looking at making the leap.
For other people, they might already have put down roots that hold them back before considering what a raw deal they’re getting. Even if someone can qualify to emigrate, significant others, kids or property can make it more difficult for them to decide to go for it.
And, of course, you have plenty of folks who drink too deeply of the Kool-Aid, and believe Fox News when they say Europe is overrun by communist governments that implement Sharia law in their gulags, and force you to be gay to hit the national quotas.
Many of the people who would have been criminalized for minor things like smoking cannabis to cope with the horrific work culture and thus are ineligible for work visas to most of the world. Many of those with the resources to do so have bought into the system and don’t know what the rest of the world is like, and there’s another group who just think the US is swell and everyone else is jealous of us and trying to come here.
“But worker rights that is socialism! Socialism is evil because the soviets say they are that!”
You have 32h/week as a standard?
Yeah its slowly becoming the standard
That’s awesome! I was actually looking into moving to Ireland (not the TERF-island part tho). Sadly their trans healthcare is also sub par.
Your sexuality is not a personality
Cool. Didn’t talk about my sexuality. Weird that you would bring that up, are you well?
Legally, I get 1 hour of sick leave for every 40 hours worked. And this is a pro-worker state, most states don’t mandate any sick leave at all.
1 hour of sick a week ? That doesn’t make sense, you can’t plan being sick. How does that work? What if your sick fir one hour and ten minutes
The way paid time off works in WA is that it goes into a fund that you get paid out of for missing work. So, a minimum of one hour of wages gets added to the pot for every full week of work.
I go to therapy weekly, so I can choose to either take my PTO to cover the hour I miss each week, or I can choose to save it for when I actually get sick. Hypothetically, I could also save it for a vacation, but I’m not bougie enough to take a vacation.
we never stopped. One week vacation per year is considered a perk at most jobs that offer it.
One week? Do you get like 46 days of bank holiday?
No, it’s usually somewhere between 5 and 12 and none of them are mandatory.
Edit: if I’m translating that right, anyway.
I don’t know how many banking holidays there are but they typically are only observed by people working at banks… Personally speaking, I’ve never had a job that gave any holidays off, but I also never had a job that gave vacation time, even though some of them said they did on paper.
No matter how valid the premise is, that headline kills this article. It should say, “Want More Productivity? Start with yada yada…”
I just want to say that I work for an amazing boss in the UK as a software developer and a few months ago we all got pay rises and a reduction in hours. We now work 33 hours a week instead of 37.5. We get 4 weeks holiday and an extra day added after each year of work up to a total of 25 days (five weeks).
We can be sick without being moaned at and they truly do put us first and the work second. I’ve had a lot of jobs before I sorted my life out (like 50+) and I swear I have PTSD from the old ones in that I can’t believe how nice my boss is as every other have been for corpos who somehow manage to get some other poor idiot to treat you like shit whilst paying you minimum wage and expecting maximum effort.
You can see that having 50 jobs meant I was not really one to take the bullshit and I would just lose the job for giving them my thoughts.
Incredibly relatable.
Only 4 weeks? In much of Europe, 5-6 weeks is the norm.
It’s 7 days in Singapore 🫠
But most white collar jobs here are around 18-21 days.
Okay i agree now what
4 weeks vacation is too small.
Make it 8. Rest is fine.
Lmao they don’t want happier employees they want more money
32 hour workweeks AND lower the overtime threshold to match. And that’s just using my office job as a basis.
The threshold from part-time to full-time will also need to be lowered accordingly for grocery store/fast food type jobs.
Don’t forget keeping yearly salary the same.
Do companies want happier employees?
If they ever figure out that happier employees are more productive therefore giving the co more money, but for that you need to look past the next quarter
