Full title: BREAKING: Bernie Sanders just introduced the Guaranteed Paid Vacation Act — a bill to guarantee at least two weeks of paid vacation to every full-time worker in America. Over 90 other members of Congress have already signed on to the legislation.
I don’t understand why the US hasn’t got powerful unions to defend workers rights. Don’t people organise themselves!?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft–Hartley_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
And of course businesses regularly lobbying against unions as well as any form of regulation they can along with media outlets controlled by the ultra wealthy serving as their propaganda outlets against unions, among other things.
Thank you for this reply, i had no idea.
Union busting and killing protestors and semding the pinkertons after them is a long held tradition in the US
There is a long and storied history behind this if you actually are interested in learning why
Someone earlier informed me about the Taft–Hartley Act, which i had no idea about.
Check out the film Matawan. Based on real events in West Virginia. And that was just one event, and I believe the beginning of years of bloody clashes.
There were essentially wars fought within this country between unions and union-busting agencies (often backed by the US government) like the Pinkertons and Baldwin Felts.
Check out The Battle of Blair Mountain, it’s wild stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
It’s a real shame to see what states like West Virginia have become. Their union forebearers would be rolling in their graves to see what they’ve become. It’s shameful.
More info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_United_States
Believe it or not, we have people who hate unions. Unfortunately it’s not without reason. Some unions are compromised and favor the company theyre made to oppose. It’s so crooked.
I am a person who dislikes unions. There was a time when they didn’t suck and actually did lots of good. But these days, they are just looking to justify the over inflated union dues. They protect many shit employees. encouraging incompetence and lazy individuals while driving the cost up and up and up. Over regulating saftey to the point of just fucking stupid. Was on a job site recently, the use of a ladder over 5ft is forbidden, and you will be written up. You must have a fucking man lift. $200 ladder vs. $15,000min piece of equipment to change lightbulbs… nice.
Had to load a large piece of used equipment I bought from a union weld fab shop. I was over size so the trucking had to leave around 13:00-14:00 to make it back to destination before sunset. I had to have a truck they were loading pull out and have my truck back in. Great. My truck is in the shop, I get the piece rigged up and ready needed 5-10 min, guy walks over to me starts to lift the piece up. Lunch bell goes, walks away, and piece dangling in the air. Can’t get him to finish loading because it’s lunch… for fucks sake. Because of the lunch delay, I have to pull my truck out because they need the bay to load and wait. My truck doesn’t get loaded until 16:00 and have to guess what, pay for another full day of trucking.
First off, the safety rules are because people die without them. They’re there for your protection. The price of them is your boss’ problem, not yours, stop worrying on his behalf, you aren’t getting paid to do his job.
Second: You need to be angry at the boss instead of the workers. Why do you think they go on break at the exact time? Because if they spend 10 minutes helping you, that’s 10 minutes they can’t eat their lunch, and if they postpone their break 10 minutes, they’ll be written up or fired for not working. The problem is their boss, you’re angry at the abused instead of the abuser.
A union employee fired? That would be amazing to see.
We have people in unions who hate unions. Apparently the propaganda Kool aid is a great flavor
Part time and contractors should be included, not just FTE.
And it should be 4 weeks. To make up for all that “productivity” we already put in without time off.
Contractors are difficult because they tend to be hourly, and hourly employees lose out when there is time off. My first studio would do typical 2 week shutdownns around Christmas time, but they stopped doing it because workers complained about lost pay.
They should definitely be added. But I think getting a foot in the door is more important while we still have this current administration.
How should this go about if I may ask? Genuinely curious to learn the terminologies behind this.
Is it a bonus? Paid leave?
A bit hard to say. Since there’s two major types of contractors
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the “basically employees” contractors are ones who do everything expected of an employee but aren’t granted the status of an employee. This is a “simple” matter in enforcing that they be actual employees under the law, either through courts or with a definition of duties that keep them from skirting that line (though employers will always try). Basically make the definition relatively lax so they can’t do stuff like “work 38 hours a week” to avoid it.
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The “truly contractors” who essentially set their own hours and get paid for work provided. Basically stuff in the gig economy . These are pay as you go so I’m not sure you can enforce vacation time into this model.
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…and to bring you in line with the rest of the world.
Start with something.
i didn’t even know the US didn’t have this
Two weeks or 10 days isn’t enough. Push for at least 20 days like most of the world has. Also force companies to provide sick days instead of using a shared pool. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice a vacation because you got sick of had to go to the doctor.
TBH this doesn’t seem like a bill that was drafted with the intent of passing. More likely this is to give Democratic challengers of Republican incumbents something easy to confront them about when they inevitably vote against this. The bill reads as reasonable to the average worker, who may be less likely to support a candidate that voted against giving them a measly 10 days off.
What about not having ‘sick days’ but unconditional paid medical leave if deemed necessary by your MD?
That’s what we have, and although it can be abused (as everything) it seems the most humane and natural thing to have. You cannot know how many days you will be sick. Generally people doesn’t get sick at all!
I’m not opposed to that. Would need to have a limited number of unverified sick days as Americans would abuse it, at least for a time. If you go to a doctor and they say it is necessary for you to be off work for 3 months, then an employer would have to respect that. There would also need to be punishment for retaliating against employees that have long sick periods.
One compromise is businesses could be compensated by the government for sick time employees use beyond what is given by company policy. If someone has to take two weeks and they were only slotted one, the government will give a fixed amount per day that does not exceed that employee’s daily wages.
The way it works in Denmark is your boss can demand a doctor’s note from your doctor. They can do this no matter the circumstances, but they’re required to pay for it. I’ve never been asked to get a doctor’s note, but I have also never been untrustworthy enough for a boss to not believe when I say I’m sick.
Note. There’s no such thing as limited sick days here. But if we’re sick for more than 30 days (or something like that), you’ll get paid by the government instead, and the rate is something like $20 pr hour instead of your normal pay.
My job has separate PTO and sick hours. Only downside is the sick hours cap at 80, with 40 given each year. So I basically just take random “sick” days.
Ah, the “I feel too good to work today” sickness
Mental health days are valid uses of sick time!
If I get sick on vacation I get to recover my vacation days. Of course I need to prove it, so it’s not always worth it or practical, but it should definitely not be the same pool.
(Im not American) While I agree 2 weeks is not nearly enough, isn’t this also a bit “perfect is the enemy of good”? Anything is better than nothing, and 2 weeks is at least a start. Pushing to 4 weeks can be done after the 2 weeks has been achieved.
I’d argue we should start taking pages out of the right’s playbook. Start with hilariously unachievable numbers to drag the Overton window towards the left, so that your actual desired number seems more reasonable in comparison.
Basically, if you only want 14 days, start by listing 28. Then when the final bill that congress is voting on only has 14 days, you’re able to say you reached across the aisle and compromised.
Conservatives do it all the time. They’ll use conservative talking heads and influencers to float extreme ideas, and begin normalizing them. So that the conservative lawmakers can then start introducing more tame versions of the now-normalized insane ideas. Basically, drag the Overton window towards the right, and now your extreme policies don’t appear as extreme.
10 is better than what we have, but don’t start with what you are willing to negotiate down to. Start strong and be willing to compromise if that is what is needed. I don’t think mandatory minimum days off is a controversial issue except for the ruling class.
Who are you giving advice to? I don’t think Bernie can hear you, and even if he could, I’m 99% sure he would passionately explain precisely why you’re wrong and the methodology behind his decision.
I’m stating my opinion. I would love to hear why he chose the days that he did. I’m not saying he is an idiot or wrong, I’m sure he knows what he can get as he has been in the Senate long enough to know these things.
Fair enough, no further comments.
Agree. In this political climate, getting any positive change is tough. This is a good first step that would have affected me at the first two of three FT positions I’ve worked. It’s not good enough long term imo, but it’s positive and I’ll celebrate the hell out of that.
No, this is conceding ground that could be used for negotiation before they even start. He’s asking for 2 weeks, negotiations happen -> maybe 1 week is achieved.
Ok, but… That is still more than the US has now. You need to start somewhere.
Yes, so you ask for 4 weeks to actually get 2. Starting a negociation with a concession is simply poor strategy
That’s exactly it. Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection
But but America number 1, no? So the new law should push them to the first place. They could call it the America Number One act.
It should be the other way around: if you are really sick multiple days during your vacation, you should get more vacation days because you didn’t have your vacation while sick. Since becoming sick right when your vacation starts is a strong indication of being seriously overworked for a long time.
That’s how it works here, in EU
Agreed, that’s insane. I get like 3 weeks just around the holidays alone. Thanksgiving week, and about two weeks from Christmas eve through new years days.
Then unlimited vacation on top of that, from which I’ve already taken 4 weeks this year.
What fucking century is this?
21st, except in the US where it’s the 19th.
Problem is we skipped all those fights last century so it’s all catching up to us
Notice how these charts always manage to fit in tiny European populations but completely erase non-Western OECD members? Centering white, Western nations as the default standard for global progress while ignoring the rest of the world is structural racism disguised as economic research.
Here is a list of the OECD countries that they left out with paid vacation laws: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Türkiye.
But all of those are white western nations as well.
You consider Colombia, Chile, and Costa Rica to be Western White Nations?
I south America not in the west?
Between a quick demographic look up and a map of the world I think so
It gets shot down because it’s labeled as socialism and all the dipshit right-wingers will praise it then bitch endlessly all year about how they don’t get enough vacation time at work
Crazy that we’re fighting to achieve some of the lowest time-off standards in the developed world.
And we will fight tooth and nail and still lose
The US maternity leave is the shortest in the world and medically dangerous.
Tbf, it’s a minimum value. Then the average will be forced to be higher, because employers still need to compete to have some postions filled.
My issue is the question on the definition of “full time position”. I’m assuming 30hr/week lime health insurance. We already have a problem of employers refusing to let employees work more than 25hr/week to avoid the additional costs associated.
I think the bill needs a provision that part-time has equivalent requirements based on yearly hours to close that loophole
So is the value for other countries. I get 25 when legal minimum is 20. You are fighting for the lowest standards.
That’s what they said about minimum wage. It’ll go up but the shit is still $7 or $2 if you’re unlucky.
AmeriKa will continue to fall behind the modern 1st Class countries who understand what it takes to maintain a stable society. Bernie is 100% correct, but the pedo protectors will not allow anything to reduce the returns for the shareholders.
That it is limited to full time workers is pretty shit because I just know this will further incentivize companies to hire part timers and schedule them just shy of full time status to avoid needing to meet this requirement.
Everyone working two part time jobs at 20-30 hrs so no employer has to pay full time benefits.
But hey, at least we don’t pay income tax on tips
10 days a year is ridiculously few
It is, however, more than none. Which is what some people are getting at the moment.
I am all for it, though I worry that employers will start treating 10 days as both a minimum and a maximum (for regular employees). I expect that the most American workers gets 10 days or less, so this law is going to be good for them and the CEOs who get 52 weeks off per year are going to keep getting that, but there are high-skilled workers who take 3-4 weeks off per year. Their employer is going to standardize on 2 weeks of per year for everyone from the janitor up to the vice president. If the employee tries looking for a job, many companies will have already switched to the 10 day standard and the rest will either follow suit, calling it “matching industry norms”, or they will use the extra vacation days as golden handcuffs.
I hope not, but I am a pessimist.
Oh look, something else Israel has that the US doesn’t
France adds on another 15 days of holidays, which can be taken at any time, not just on national holidays. It’s a total of 8 weeks.
Oh yeah, how many billionaires with doomsday shelters and yachts fleets does Frances have?
Check mate, frenchies.
(Goes to die in a ditch)
Are you saying France has vacation days, holidays and 15 days of holiday you can take whenever? Cause Denmark has 25 vacation days and 5-10 (Depending on what days 24+25+26+31/12 and 1/1 falls on and if you have the 24th and 31st of December off) holidays, so a total of 30-35 days off, meaning guaranteed 5 weeks whenever you want and 1-2 weeks of national holidays.
Many people in France will have 39 h/week contracts, but because the legal workweek is 35h, you actually accumulate 2 extra days per month worked
As is often the case in France, it’s complicated.
Basic paid leave for a CDI/cadre (full time employee) is 25 business days.
On top of that there is RTT. This is because we have a 35 hour work week. In order to do the more typical 40 week, you get those hours back as more paid leave - 10 days.
On top of that there national holidays, of which there are plenty. Most of these revolve around food from what I can tell (I’m a Brit, I just live in France). If those national holidays fall on a weekend, you lose them though, which sucks, but even a bad year is pretty good.
This info is coming from a relative who was working in France. My understanding was he didn’t automatically get any of France’s scheduled holidays of unless he used leave to do so. So the bank of 15 “national holidays” was effectively converted into more leave.
France adds on another 15 days of holidays, which can be taken at any time, not just on national holidays. It’s a total of 8 weeks.
