Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

'Zactly.

Rich.

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

hi

holidays are the most contentious issue whether its canada or the uk.

i employ staff in scotland and we give 23 days a year i think the minimum you are allowed to give in the uk is 21, our 23 days is made up with 12 days holiday plus 11 public holidays , i dont think the uk is mutch different to what i have heard from the canadian system , public holidays seem about the same.but everyone focuses on the 2 weeks holiday !!

i suppose its down to how you can parcel the public hols together and how flexible your company is in allowing you to stockpile them.

good luck with the ban im sick of talking about it at work !!

g

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

That'll be the "recruitment vs retention" argument, dbd. I know you're being deliberately provocative and you know all this really, but I'll take the bait anyway :p

I'll preface this by limiting it to the "normal" world of full-time employment beyond the boundaries of IT contracting... It costs an employer quite a bit - both in terms of initial reduced productivity of the new staffer and in terms of raw recruitment costs - to replace an experienced employee when they leave. Therefore adding a small incentive for long service, by way of increased vacation allowances for each year worked or whatever, may encourage people for whom vacation is an important consideration (and who knows we've seen from this thread and countless others that there are plenty of such people!) to stay where they are instead of up sticks for a new job, and at little incremental cost to the employer.

Your "someone waiting who will take less" may well end up actually costing the company more, if you see what I mean. It's not always all about dollars per hour.

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

I don't deal with "normal" full time employment but I would say that the situation of the computer contractor is similar to that of many other working people; my accountant and my car mechanic only get paid for hours worked, similarly my lawyer only gets paid for hours billed. Last week my OH finally got a work permit and now she has a job as an archivist in a museum, it's written as a contract, n dollars no benefits. All jobs in which the people are replacable, all jobs just about dollars per hour.

A difference between employment practise here (Ontario) and the UK is that it's usual here to have contract staff on the premises for years on end whereas in the UK the tax system now makes that an unattractive option. What firms do in the UK, of course, is to form an offshore subsidiary and then contract the bodies to work onshore with the same result; hourly pay, no benefits, no paid vacation.

I think that in a high tax economy giving up paid vacations for the sake of writing off the car is a win for the "employee" but, beyond that, I've come to the view that holidays are something people choose to have and it's really no business of the employer to subsidize them.

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

I personally found it a much more chillied out atsmosphere at work. We used to leave very early most days so wasnt foaming at the mouth to get away like here.

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

Vancouver does have the reputation of being laid back to last Wednesday.

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

Ah, that and rising-to-boiling-point real estate would be why corporate H.O.'s are relocating from the GVA in droves.

Rich.

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

Perhaps it's the smell. From being "chillied out".

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

Maybe if more people complained, we North Americans might get a humane amount of holiday leave?

Just a thought!

your neighbour to the south
Amy

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

...but if your accountant and your lawyer worked for an accountancy firm and a legal firm respectively, rather than for themselves or on contract for you, then they would draw a salary (plus whatever other benefits they had negotiated into their contracgt of employment, which may include paid vacation). Granted that if you contract a lawyer, accountant, plumber, mechanic or whatever directly then you pay by the hour only for hours worked on your account, but you could equally choose to pay an hourly rate to a company who provide an employee to carry out the task.

I used to work in media relations for technology companies, and at various times was self-employed as a freelance contractor, an employee of a consultancy who billed the clients and paid me a salary, and a direct employee of the client organisation. In the first case my earnings were probably higher overall, but I was responsible for my own overhead costs. Fine as a young singleton but with increasing family and financial responsibilities I chose the stability (and, yes, the paid holidays) of full-time employment over the freelance world.

Being employed by an agency appeared to offer the best of both but had its own pitfalls, I think - costs to the client organisation were much higher which meant that it was in many cases a no-brainer to cut budgets drastically when the dot-com bubble burst, leaving loads of us with no billable hours and a "terminate me now, please" sign round our necks...(but still, I suppose, the redundancy cheque was OK and not something I would have seen as a freelance).

Anyway, speaking of employers, I'd better do something productive with what's left of the morning... back later ;)

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

Sure. Each to their own but I think in a high tax economy contracting is better for the "employee" (well, obviously I do); I don't think I could have generated the income to put the kids through school if I had had a proper job.

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

Out of curiosity, is that a normal consultancy rate? I really have no feel for North American rates. I know what my company sells me for; I wish they paid me that!!!

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

No, that firm buys a lot of time from us (>40hrs/week) so they get a discount.

Rates are all over the place. The best we've been able to get for long term work (effectively a permanent job) for someone here was USD350, you can do better in London but, of course, everything costs more. At the time I got the 350 I had that guy's wife out on a similar job, I could only get 275 for her,on account of her lack of a penis, but still for three or four years they had an impressive household income.

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

:mad:

Exactly what sort of consultancy? I'll learn anything and get a strap-on if needed.

Re: Could we please instigate a ban???
 

Nothing so thrilling. Just programming. What makes people valuable is being "carded", that is having a current security clearance, and being a US citizen (though if you're British, it's possible to work around that).