Observations and questions about employee leave in countries other than the US

[Excelsior! Academy]

This board has expanded my horizons many times.  I have only lived in the US and as such am only familiar with US employment and leave culture.  Many of you have shared about job leave availability in other countries, like month long holidays and extended maternity leave.  How does that work?  Do the companies hire more employees?  Do goods cost more to absorb the cost of paying employees while they are on leave?

[Arcadia]

I come from a high cost of living country. Extended maternity leave is partially subsidized by the government (reimbursement for two months basic salary) but employers are paying for the temp. So some employers would not hire a temp and the other staff in the same department have to do more, hence the resentment can build up. 

Do you mean sabbaticals when you mentioned month long holidays? Where I was, only the big MNCs offer sabbaticals as a benefit. Annual leave defers as there is no national standards. For example, I max out on annual leave at 18 days for engineering but my dept secretary max out at 27 days. Engineers do a lot of overtime so we do get plenty of paid time off as compensation for overtime. I am not entitled to overtime pay as an engineer but my boss just subsumed overtime pay under performance bonus. 
 

When negotiating pay, the annual leave has already been factored in by HR. So if you want more annual leave, the HR can agree to that by deducting the pay offered. 

[regentrude]

In Germany, fully paid maternity leave is 14 weeks. Six weeks before the birth which the mother can take if she wants (but some women choose to work until closer to delivery), and 8 weeks after the birth which are mandatory and where the mother is not permitted to work. 
In addition, parents are entitled to three years unpaid parental leave (which they can divide between both parents at their discretion) with a guarantee of their job back afterwards. During this time, they can receive a tax payer funded parent subsidy to compensate partially for the loss in earnings.
Employees are entitled by law to at least 20 paid holidays.
Employees receive six weeks of paid sick leave. If the illness lasts longer than six weeks, they receive sick pay from their health insurance company which is a certain percentage their usual salary. Health insurance is mandatory.

Taxes are higher to finance things that society has deemed desirable, like the parental leave payments.
The employer paid benefits (vacation, sick leave) are part of the benefits that come with the job, and I would assume factor in when employers calculate what salaries they can afford to pay. It is difficult to compare wages and prices directly with the US, because the entire price structure is not comparable: some things are more expensive, others are a lot cheaper.
If a person is on extended leave for maternity leave, the company may hire a temp replacement. That's no different than in the US where certain more enlightened employers offer maternity leave - they either hire, or the remaining employees have to divvy the responsibilities among themselves.

Edited July 28, 2021 by regentrude

[fraidycat]

I'm not sure if it's a provincial or federal standard but every employee in my province is entitled to the equivalent of 3 weeks paid vacation time per year. It goes up to 4 weeks after 10 years.

Companies have some say in how they handle it. Some pay it out on every paycheque (usually part time and high turnover employers will do this) by calculating 3/52 or 5.77% of each paycheque and adding it on. Some companies allow the "holiday pay" to accumulate forever until the employee leaves the position, so the employee can request a withdrawal at any time (if they are going on vacation or have an unexpected expense), and others will only allow it to accumulate for the year and whatever hasn't been used, either in paid days off, or withdrawn as a cash equivalent will be paid out once/year.

So how this works is that my kids, both working at McD's, get paid an additional 5.77% of their hourly wages earned paid out on each paycheque. My company accumulates the amount that I can use as either paid time off or if I don't use it, I get paid out at the end of the year. My DH's job accumulates vacation pay until he requests a withdrawal.

Maternity leave is 19 weeks + 59 weeks of Parental Leave (parents can split this so both mom and dad can be home for a few months together if they wish, or take turns). I wasn't working when I had kids so I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but I think it is paid through EI at 60% of your average wages. I could be wrong about that. EI is the government employment insurance program that is paid into through taxes/wage deductions every paycheque. You have to have worked enough time prior to the paid leave to be entitled to be paid for the full time off. If you don't have enough working time prior, you are still able to take the full time and your job will be yours when you return, it will just be unpaid time off after you've exhausted your paid benefits.

Employees are hired on a temporary contract to fill in for maternity/parental leave positions and are advertised as such.

COL on goods is higher in Canada on average than the U.S. but I can't say that paid leave and employment standards are a driving factor in that. It could just as easily be that CAD is lower value vs USD and many of our products (especially fresh food) comes from the US, so we pay for the exchange rate, shipping, etc. in the cost of our goods. 
 

ETA: I forgot about Stat Holiday Pay - as in the holiday Mondays, like Labor Day (and Christmas, etc. - 10 per year) that are either a paid day (8 hours at full wage for full time, or a calculation (5%) based on previous hours worked in 4 weeks prior to the Stat Holiday) And, if you are required to work that day employees are paid 1.5x wages for the hours worked. So you get 5% of your previous 4 weeks wages PLUS time and half for the hours worked on the holiday.

Edited July 28, 2021 by fraidycat
Adding info

[Laura Corin]

UK - Basic annual leave is 28 days. As a university administrator I have 34 days after 6 years of service. Sick pay at about 100 pounds per week is payable by the employer for 28 weeks. Maternity pay is paid for 39 weeks, starting whenever you choose to stop work

https://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave/pay

I think wages are lower but some other costs are lower too - health care costs are controlled by a single payer system and university loans will be much lower. I remember @ktgrok couldn't afford to move here because the salaries offered didn't cover college loan repayments.

[TheReader]

Cost of living in Brazil is high. 

All employees (full time) are given 30 days vacation per year (but the 30 days includes Sat/Sun, so it equals 20 days vacation here), and employees can take them in 10-day blocks. Also, employees are paid a higher rate while on vacation, "because vacation is expensive."  (but also, you can't reach out to them for any kind of work, at all, email, etc, during vacation)

Also, the salary in Brazil is split into 13, so that in December, you get a full extra month's salary. That is done for all employees, down to if you have a gardener come or maid or anything (You give a 13th check as a bonus). 

I don't know what the maternity leave is, but I know even father's can take time off that's not vacation time when their baby is born. 

When people are on vacation, they have to stagger their time off (so not everyone is off all at the same time) and the other employees just pick up the slack, much like here. Unless it's Carnival or World Cup, in which case things just slow down/stop at certain times. (like, if it's the World Cup, and Brazil is playing, then no work happens on the day of their matches, some places even close entirely). 

also some places close for the 2 weeks of Christmas/New Years, which then doesn't impact your use of vacation time. 

 

[lewelma]

Here in NZ, Maternity leave is paid for 26 weeks and then you have 26 more unpaid weeks, meaning you can take a year off and get your job back.  This leave can be transferred to your partner if you want. Because of this, 1 year 'maternity contracts' are common, where the company hires someone for a year. Because health care here is not tied to your job, there are lots of people who like flipping jobs every year and will take these contracts.  (The partner also gets 2 weeks unpaid leave, so that both parents can be home for the first 2 weeks.)

We get 4 weeks paid holiday leave as a minimum. The companies know this is happening with every employee, so they schedule it and plan for it. 

We have 10 public holidays that people are required to get. If you work on those days you get time and a half I think, and you must get a different day off. 

As for goods costing more because of this leave entitlement, it is hard to say the impact. The cost of living is high here because everything has to be shipped in from far away and we are a small population so don't get the economies of scale. 

Edited July 28, 2021 by lewelma

[bookbard]

We have paid parental leave in Australia - both parents get leave after the baby is born, and it's paid by the government. The employer would factor it in, in advance, just as an employer would factor in annual leave, long service leave and so on. The mother gets 12 weeks, the father/partner gets 2 weeks. 

Annual leave is 4 weeks, and then there's lots of other kinds of leave like carer's leave and sick leave and long service leave. You have to know all this stuff when you take on employees, but I know I get lots of emails from the department of fair trading about these things so it would be very difficult not to know about it. You can look up the details for your industry online, because each industry is going to be slightly different; for example, teachers have to take their leave during school holidays. 

 

 

[bolt.]

4 hours ago, Excelsior! Academy said:

Do the companies hire more employees?  Do goods cost more to absorb the cost of paying employees while they are on leave?

Canada has been very well explained already above, but, yes usually a company does hire a replacement worker for someone who is out on parental leave (a temporary position), and they generally maintain a workforce large enough that business can get done with everybody taking the usual amount of vacation time.

A salaried employee will often struggle to get a bunch of the work they are responsible for 'done anyways', by feeling crunched before or after their vacation time. Employers who can create that climate of 'responsibility' don't tend to suffer much overall in terms of business still getting done. 

These things don't have much impact on the cost of "goods" since, (a) Most companies are not manufacturing consumer goods -- that's just not a big sector of our economy -- and (b) End-point pricing is governed by supply and demand, not by inputs and outputs. Companies will always charge as much as they practically can for a good or service regardless of how much it costs to produce (or distribute/market) it. Charging more than that sweet spot actually reduces profits because it reduces sales overall. If a product can't be sold at the desired profit at a price that people will pay, they are more likely to just not make it (it's not viable) than to overprice it and hope for the best.

[Melissa Louise]

Leave only really applies to permanent employees here. 

In AU, like elsewhere, the workforce is increasingly casualised - no leave for many workers at all - and that reaches all the way from the shop floor to the university lecture hall. 

Theoretically, a slightly higher rate of pay is meant to compensate for lack of leave - it doesn't. 

So here (AU) it's a two stream system. Some people access adequate leave. Many don't. 

 

[Spryte]

DH’s company is based in Germany.  @regentrude explained it better than I ever could, but if it’s of interest, in addition to that the standard benefits package for German employees in DH’s company is 6 weeks paid vacation, with the time between mid-December to New Year’s Day being paid leave as well.  (In addition to the regular holidays). Most people vacation all of August and then use the remaining two weeks for smaller vacations throughout the year.  Sick leave is very liberal, and generally if someone is going to call in sick it’s for a week at a time.  No recovering at the office, the office culture is to come back when you are well.  Twice, a person has been out for a year+ for cancer treatment, and that’s subsidized I’m sure, but their job is guaranteed to be there when they come back.  Another person was out recently for maybe three months to deal with pandemic stress.  Again, no fear of job loss and the expectation was that he would be well upon return, if not he had the option of staying out longer.  Another employee will be returning after 18 mos maternity leave soon.  They hired a temp for part of her work and covered for her.  There was a long paternity leave as well, but I’ve forgotten those details.

[regentrude]

2 minutes ago, Spryte said:

DH’s company is based in Germany.  @regentrude explained it better than I ever could, but if it’s of interest, in addition to that the standard benefits package for German employees in DH’s company is 6 weeks paid vacation, with the time between mid-December to New Year’s Day being paid leave as well.  (In addition to the regular holidays). Most people vacation all of August and then use the remaining two weeks for smaller vacations throughout the year.  Sick leave is very liberal, and generally if someone is going to call in sick it’s for a week at a time.  No recovering at the office, the office culture is to come back when you are well.  Twice, a person has been out for a year+ for cancer treatment, and that’s subsidized I’m sure, but their job is guaranteed to be there when they come back.  Another person was out recently for maybe three months to deal with pandemic stress.  Again, no fear of job loss and the expectation was that he would be well upon return, if not he had the option of staying out longer.  Another employee will be returning after 18 mos maternity leave soon.  They hired a temp for part of her work and covered for her.  There was a long paternity leave as well, but I’ve forgotten those details.

Technically "maternity leave" and "parental leave" are slightly different things. Maternity leave is the 14 weeks surrounding the birth (or adoption). Salary is fully paid by employer. Parental leave is up to three years, can be divided among the parents as they see fit; they may even save two years for later in the child's life. During this time, job is guaranteed; salary is not continued by employer, but parents can receive two years of tax funded benefit of two thirds of income, capped at a maximum amount of 1,800 Euros.

[Excelsior! Academy]

Thank you to all who answered.  This is fascinating. I enjoy learning how other countries and cultures work.