How many people can't travel because of work?

[Cruisin' Chick]

I have worked in companies that you have to work for several years before you start getting more than a couple of weeks of vacation per year. And this was an industry that had plenty of lay-offs. Again, don't judge someone and assume that everyone can get time off with out hassle.

[perthgirl]

Are those extra 13 weeks a "one shot deal" or do you get that every year? If so, that is a pretty sweet deal. Not even the US governmental agencies give that kind of generous holidays to their workers, except for the schools.

 

In response to the original qestion: No I have never been refused time off for a family vacation during holidays over my entire career in the software industry. This has been true regardless of the company size - large company, small company, startup, etc. My travel schedule is more constrained by my kids school schedule. This is especially an issue for travel in Southern Hemisphere where summer largely coincides with school.

 

The 13 weeks is after every 10/15 years and is on top of the four weeks a year. I ended up leaving to go to another job and got it in cash (guess what is paying for our med cruise in Oct!)

[Disneygirl4ever]

I just got a new job and I start on Tuesday. After I was offered the job I entered into negotiations. The job was starting with no vacation for a year. I immediately said "I have already booked a family cruise for the first week of January." They had NO problem with it and said "Oh, that's fine. If it's booked there is nothing you can do. Just give me the dates that you will be out"

 

My DH is starting a new job in 2 weeks. He negotiated two upcoming vacations (one in October and our cruise in June). His new company pays 1 week of vacation after one year. They said he could take the vacations, but they'd be unpaid. We're sucking it up and taking the vacations anyway. His former company will pay him 2.5 days of vacation (they do some stupid accrual system, so even though he had 5 days, he's only accrued 2.5 up to his last day of work), and with the new company, he will have earned 3 personal days by June, so he can use those for our cruise (getting paid for 3 is better than not getting paid at all).

 

Me, I'm a pre-school teacher (working 3 days a week) so I'm off summers and I get the normal school vacations. However, my director is AWESOME and lets us take time off during the school year. We can't abuse her, but a few days here and there is no problem. I'm taking 2 days off in October to go to San Francisco. (oh, and these are unpaid days, of course. I don't get paid vacation time since I'm part-time)

[lemkim]

I work in factory with 450 employees. I am a shift lead with 16 years of service. I get 4 weeks and 4 personal days. But, I work 12 hour schedules so they convert my days to hours and I only get 192 hours. That is alot if you work days and don't work weekends. But, I work starting @4:30 in the evening and every other weekend. I use seniority for time off. I try to spread it out over the entire year but, I also must use Vacation for Weddings and family events.

 

There are some in our plant that must use all of their days in January or they don't get any time off. We don't always finish scheduling our time off until Febuary or March in my department.

[s318830]

We're taking our cruise in January specifically because it'll be our last chance for a very long time to take a long family vacation. DH is an airline pilot. He's been furloughed for that last 5+ years. He's going to go back to flying in March. Once he goes back he'll be at the bottom of the food chain for bidding vacation days, and it'll be years before he has enough seniority to get the days he wants, or is able to trade for additional days off around the vacation days.

 

So this vacation is our last hurrah as a family before our days of nice long pre-planned family vacations come to a screeching halt.

 

I work full time, but I'm in management and I set the work/travel schedule for my group. I'm very careful to create the schedule only after I get the vacation days and no-travel date requests from my employees. There's never a guarantee, but I've never had to ask one of my employees to cancel or not go on a vacation. We travel a lot, sometimes on short-notice, and I think I'd start to lose employees if I asked them to start giving up personal time.

 

--Debbie