Can your employer dictate/force when you take time off?

repeat: no laws require employers to give vacation days. you don't have an entitlement to vacation.

here is a list of the florida statutes regulating employment. i realize all states differ but you can refer to this as an example. you don't have a right to vacation. period. http://www.flsenate.gov/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=Ch0448/part01.htm&StatuteYear=2006&Title=%2D%3E2006%2D%3EChapter%20448%2D%3EPart%20I

 

Leo,
I don't quite understand.

Up here after you've worked one year, you're entitled to two weeks paid vacation.

Are you saying that's NOT the case in Florida?

 

By law, JR? Or just by policy?

 

By law

 

JR, my understanding of employment law based on having taken classes in the subject, done some work in the field while a part-time law clerk at a firm and researched the issue is that nothing in this country requires vacation time. period. vacation is not mandated. i assume it is in canada because some of your social policies closer resemble western european norms.

reality is, of course, that if an employer gave zero vacation days he'd have a tough time attracting workers. even most minimum wage grunt jobs offer 1-2 weeks vacation for full-timers.

 

hell, employees aren't even required by law to provide health insurance, why do so many people in an industry where fact-gathering is top priority believe the law requires paid vacations?

 

It's the law up here and I'm absolutely dumbfounded that it's not down there.

It's not a question of our social policies resembling Western European norms. It's that a "no vacation entitlement" is Dickensian and further proof that unions have not outlived their usefullness.

I'd have to check but I figure this has been in our labour law for at least fifty years. Maybe longer.

It's the reason why I find "Right to Work" one of the great Orwellian phrases of our time.

 

When I last worked full-time in the biz, the vacation policy was initially this:

*-You get 1 week after 6 months of service, 2 weeks after a year and 3 weeks after 6 years (and, IIRC, there were benchmarks for 4 and 5 weeks, too). All employees also get from 1-3 personal days.
*-You must use that time between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 of the calendar year. Use it or lose it.

A couple of years ago, they changed the policy.
*-All vacation & personal days were rolled into a "paid time-off" policy.
*-You accrued so many days of PTO every day you worked. The benchmarks were the same -- basically, you got 0.5 days of PTO per month worked through 6 months; by the time you were a veteran, you got 1.5 days of PTO every month, which worked out to 3.5 weeks a year).
*-You can roll over 25% of your annual days off. The rollover date is your work anniversary date, NOT the calendar year, so there's not a massive rush to take days off in November & December.

It was a bit more flexible and wise policy, which, of course, means that few other newspapers would use it, because it actually guarantees employees will take that time off.

My rollover date was in late July. The last couple of years, I pretty much took half the summer off. Of course, I now get a 10-week vacation every summer, one week every spring and two weeks over Christmas, but my FT gig is in another profession .

 

For the accountants, its a question the time owing being what they call (if I remember correctly) and "unfunded liability."
The meaning, and I'm paraphrasing liberally here - I'm not an accountant, I was a manager who had to learn this crap - is that the time needs to be paid off in some form, and as they end their fiscal years, to us what seems a simple matter of vacation carryover, gets the accountants and HR folk in a tizzy because, essentially, they have a deficit.
Like a mortgage - its easy to pay out monthly, but if the bank suddenly came and wanted it all, you'd be fucked and have to sell the house.
The company thinks the same way about time owing.

 

Well, that's how SOME companies look at it. Other companies look at vacation, sick and personal days, as days they have to pay employees for doing nothing -- nothing more, nothing less.

And unless there's a written contract specifically stating they must grant vacation, they'd just as soon get 260 days work out of their employees for 260 days pay, rather than 240.

 

As some of you know, I am an employment lawyer. Here's the (general) deal when it comes to time off (unless you are in California, which is very wacky and very pro-employee).

Absent a collective bargaining agreement, an employment contract or some other agreement, there is very little which an employer can't dictate when it comes to pay or hours of work. They have to pay you the minimum wage, they have to pay you overtime after 40 hours unless you are exempt from the overtime rules. In nearly every state, you have no entitlement to days off (even holidays) or vacation. If you have vacation or other PTO, the employer can dictate when that vacation is taken, how it accrues and whether it carries over. However, employers are usually required to follow their own stated policies when it comes to paying out accrued PTO.

If anyone has any specific questions, you can always PM me.