Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

What is the typical number of paid holidays you get in the US? Do you get paid for all the bank holidays? Thank you!!

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

Good thread in the Trailer Park forum, first page:

And Brits never believe me how crap the vacation time is here

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

The low paid jobs I've been looking at get 1 or 2 weeks, my wife works in the medical field and gets 4 weeks a year.

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

I'm an office worker at a public university. We get holiday at a rate of "eight hours per month" at my level...once I have been there for five years I think it moves to ten hours per month or something like that. I can't use it for the first six months of my appointment but I can still accrue it during that time.

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

As far as public holidays go, my experience on the west coast is that most people only get the major ones. The public sector takes all them off of course. I had one job where the only holiday I had at all was Thanksgiving and Christmas day. That was it. Two days a year. I'm self employed now, but my last "proper" job gave 5 days a year paid. if you were sick, your time off come out of your 5 days.
As for whether it's worth it, only you can decide. Personally, I don't like the attitude that many (not all though. Some are pretty good) employers over here have to their employees.

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

I love the fact I get 25 days a year I think it is important to take time out and live life outside of work but there are many pros about the US. I wouldn't base my decision purely on holiday time but you got to weigh it all up to assess quality of life I guess....

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

I get 27 paid days off per year, that includes vacation, bank holidays and sick time. Up until 4 months ago I got 22.

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

It really varies by job, however many find that they end up with much less vacation allowance than they would have enjoyed in Europe. I get 15 days paid vacation and 11 paid holiday days (they don't call them bank holidays here), versus 25 days plus 8 bank holidays which is what I got for doing the same job for the same company in the UK.

Note that in the US, just the same as the UK, it is not usual for the employer to dictate when you must take your vacation. When this occurs it is the exception and not the rule.

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

We are just setting up a company in Virginia and I am learning all about these sort of things....

New starters in a company get 10 days PTO (personal time off). This covers holidays AND sickness (and time off looking after sick children etc).... Of course, this can all be negotiated at the job interview, but at the moment with unemployment so high, it is the employers who are in the driving seat !

Note - Public holidays are separate - but these vary state to state..

Carl.

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

It must also depend on the area you work in and how in demand your job is - every company that my husband has spoken to in the US has always agreed to match his 30 days holiday allowance, no questions asked. But his industry is desperate for experienced people, so they're prepared to take extra steps to recruit (including the whole visa/sponsorship thing which seems to be fairly unusual as well).

So it seems to be negotiable, depending upon skills and industry.

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

Same for my wife.

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

You're legally entitled to 0 days off.

What you get, depends on the sector, your seniority and negotiating skills.

You can get any thing from nothing in the first year and earning up to 10 days after a few years of service from starting out with 15 and going up from there.

Public holidays, they may or may not be given and they may or may not be paid.

Your holiday time may or may not include sick leave and it all may or may not be paid.

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

Like others have said, it depends on the industry, the level of seniority and the flexibility of the company to negotiate.

My mother-in-law works for a University in the West Coast as a Librarian. She gets 21 days of leave plus the week between Christmas and New Year's on top of that. Sick leave is extra and she gets all 15 public holidays off, not just the major ones, and yes, she gets paid for these. She's told me that she has colleagues who have agreed with the University to buy off extra holiday time, and so they end up with about 6-7 weeks' vacation a year. Of course the extra is taken as unpaid leave, but the University allows them to do that.

My sister-in-law works for a major music and movie production company in LA. She gets something like 2 weeks of holiday a year and sick leave is extra too. She too gets all 15 public holidays off (paid) plus some extras (for example, they are given Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve off, the day before Thanksgiving is also off - so they end up with a nice 5-day break at Thanksgiving, and another couple days attached to the major public holidays). So that at least makes up for the lack of official leave days. They also let them carry leave days over to the next year.

So it really depends ;)

Another big difference is that employers in the UK (especially in the public sector) are more willing to give "time off in lieu" for any overtime worked, whereas in the US it's more common for employers (in the public and private sectors alike) to actually pay for any overtime. Sister-in-law is able to give a nice boost to her monthly salary by working an extra hour 3 days a week ;)

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

Or, as I've found, be far more likely to not pay you for that over time, but expect you to do it or find yourself top of the shit list in the financial statement quarterly scramble to cut costs.

Re: Is it worth giving up 25 or more days paid holiday in the UK?
 

Yup, the old "voluntary" overtime.