robin1234

I used to get twenty days a year, plus the days between Christmas and New Year. So, good in US terms but less than UK norms.

academiclibrarian

I see, sounds reasonable

Bob

Will depend on the state.

At the federal level, there is zero day leave/sick requirement.

Many places, be lucky to get 5-10 days after the first year and work up to anything normal after 3-5 years at the place. Generally speaking....but you'll get more public holidays on a government/academic type of job.

Bob

How many years were you working there though?

And did your replacement get that if they weren't a internal promotion?

robin1234

From day one. Four to six weeks leave per year is normal for administrators and non teaching faculty at colleges and universities. (Obviously, teaching faculty are different, since they in effect get the summer and January off.)

Each institution will be different though, some may just get two weeks vacation each year. Others may be on a nine, ten, or eleven month contract, which of course means three, two, or one month additional time off.. with benefits for twelve months. At my private college, librarians and faculty are non union, at other places they are union.

robin1234

Ah.. My replacement. The plan is to have a series of meetings over the summer to hash out a position description for my replacement, then have a national search in the fall with my replacement starting in January. Meanwhile, they want me to come back over the summer as a consultant for special projects. Right now I'm working for them unpaid by giving advice via email on a daily basis even though I'm on holiday in England...

academiclibrarian

And what about sick leave? say if you are off for about 2-3 days with a cold etc do you need to fill in forms etc. how does that affect your pay, if at all, if you are employed permanently.
i would assume that if one is on a contract then obviously it does affect your wages.
Where I work at the moment it has always been fairly relaxed so we don't really have to report it officially - we just let our line manager know. I suspect it will change to something more formal - filling in an online self assessment form but again it does not affect my pay in any way.

robin1234

This will vary widely in US colleges and universities, depending on factors such as whether librarians are union or non union, faculty or administrative staff, etc. Where I worked (I'm now retired) librarians are faculty and non union. We each had individual annual contracts renewed at the "pleasure of" the President. There was no formal reporting of or necessity to account for sick time. So, you could take no sick days or two months off sick if needed, just something you'd have to square with your colleagues, but it wouldn't affect salary. If you needed several months off, presumably you would have to think about transitioning to short term disability or whatever.

Bob

Every place is different. It often comes out of your holiday allowance and if off more than a couple days you get a doctors note.

Pulaski

That has been my experience, and seems to be the norm in most jobs.

Consider yourself lucky if you have a separate sickness entitlement, however a colleague told me that when he had a job with a ten day annual sick leave entitlement, the job only had a ten day holiday entitlement! .... So it seemed like a plus when the company moved to a 21 day annual "whatever" entitlement.

This practice of not allowing time off for sickness does tend to lead to many people dragging themselves coughing and spluttering into the office just to avoid using up their holiday days (early in the year), or being forced to take unpaid time off (late in the year).

robin1234

But the question was about the academic field, colleges, universities, research institutes etc. in general they have pretty generous vacation and sick time policies for faculty and administrators .... although often not for secretarial and technical staff.

Having said that, if the job is in a union, vacation and sick accounting is often strict because it has to conform to a union contract.

Dewey

At my University librarians are considered staff by the University but as I work in the medical library the School of Medicine gives me an annually renewed adjunct faculty appointment. As a private university we are non-union. We earn one paid sick day per month up to a maximum 180 days, so you start with no paid sick leave but build up from there, For an extended illness I would talk to HR to use up my paid sick and annual leave then switch to the short term disability insurance, then the long term disability insurance if required. The employer subsidized disability insurance I pay contributions towards would be crucial for me in the event of a serious illness, as a green card holder you are ineligible for state benefits until you have paid into the social security system for 40 quarters (10 years), I have another 3 years to go.

Bob

True, but I was speaking about a college in Boston, a friends father works as a librarian when this subject came up, as they weren't treated as faculty, only the head honcho was.

Happens to be the case in my town library too as I was looking at a job there.