As of next year as far as paid holiday goes I will have 5 weeks, plus 8 bank holidays, and usually a day or two extra around Xmas. So a total of about 34 - 35 days. And I can take unpaid leave whenever I want. I do have to take 3 days between Xmas & New Year when the business is shut, but I don't mind that since it means I usually get around 23rd December to 2nd or 3rd Jan off for only 3 days holiday used.
I have a research grant in academia, so I pretty much work whenever I feel like it. Kidding aside, as long as I do my job, nobody is going to count hours. I generally take 3 weeks in August, and two weeks around Christmas/New Year, plus some spare days. Not counting "official" holidays (like Liberation Day (25th of April), Workers' Day, etc).
Can you take unpaid leave? It seems rather shortsighted not to have statutory holidays, great way to burn out your employees and make them not feel any loyalty to you.
My company...I can take off when I want. However, oddly, I am just about always the first one in the office and even when I have a day off, I always have my phone or tablet.
156 hours annual vacation (basically four weeks), 104 hours annual sick leave, eleven paid holidays. Hourly, full time. Boy, no kidding. I would be ashamed to run a business that treated employees that way.
I'm a contractor, not an employee, so I only get paid for the hours I work. My main contract specifies that I have stat holidays and up to 15 vacation days per fiscal year, both unpaid.
I "bank" about 14.5 hours vacation leave per month, which comes to a little over 4 weeks per year. I usually stay maxed out at my limit of 8 weeks banked vacation time due to my workload. But I also get a "mandatory" week at spring break, and 1.5-2 weeks at Christmas break. Then, there are the paid holidays. That doesn't count the paid sick leave that accrues at 10 hours per month. Too bad the job pays slave wages.
My brewery is open 365 days a year. We could potentially close on holidays, but since holidays are the biggest drinking days for everybody else (because they actually do get holidays off), it would be bad move. Heck, Christmas Day is one of our best money-making days of the whole year. It wouldn't make sense for us to close.
Right now I have four weeks of vacation plus three personal days. I think that when the next fiscal year begins in October I get bumped up to five weeks/three personal. ETA: To expand: I've been with my current company for about 17 years but as far as my vacation time and such they're counting the 3 years I spent with the previous company, which they bought out of the area. When I get to those Five Weeks/3 Days I will maxed out on vacation time. In addition to that time I also get a paid day off around the "major" holidays (New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas.) This day off can be taken the week before, during or after the holiday depending on scheduling works out. Right now it's essentially mandatory you use it, but in the past they allowed you to just work, essentially making double-time on that holiday. Vacation time does not carry over between fiscal years. In extreme circumstances it is permissible to cash-out a vacation week but only after you've already used one. But, again, this is for pretty extreme circumstances with our current director. Right now, at four weeks I take a vacation once a quarter. When I hit five weeks I'll try to take a vacation once inside every 10 week period. I used to not use the personal days as I preferred to use them as sick-days but I'm rarely sick enough to miss work and they started pressuring us to use our vacation time so, screw it, I attach a PD at the end of three vacation weeks. I'm not sure what the "pattern" is for gaining personal time at our company but all full-time employees get it. New hires start with one week and no personal days, after one year they get two weeks and three personal days and build from there. Got to say, it's really, really nice to have so much vacation time to take over the year and there are certainly times when I need it. Hardest thing is going back to the work at the end of it, usually that first day I'm pretty discombobulated and pretty much trying to readjust to the whole "work" thing. It's surprising to me (though not really) that any company wouldn't have some-kind-of system in place to offer paid leave to their employees. I'm sure studies have been done and shown that giving your people some time off is good for their mental health, work place atmosphere not to mention an incentive to work with your company. And if you don't offer paid time off an employee is unlikely to just take un-paid time off because, well, our society runs on money and people can hardly afford to take time off from work without pay without impacting the household budget. It's no surprise given how this country operates that paid leave isn't mandatory for employers in the States and if such a proposal were ever presented to Congress I'm sure the political-right would fight against it with their dying breath. (see: Minimum Wage.) We're not machines and cannot just work and work and work without some kind of break and the two days a week (whether broken up over the week or over the weekend) plus the occasional major holiday isn't enough. Giving them paid time off will make your employees happy and also be an attractive incentive for people to work for your company. Both of which will make your business stronger.
I'm a teacher, so there's the whole 'summer' thing. However, that isn't paid time - we're considered 10-month employees. I get 3 personal days and 10 sick days, plus a spring break and a winter break. In the four years I've taught I've used a grand total of 4 personal days and 1 sick day. We also had 17 snow days last year.
Doing the math...8 1/2 weeks 3 weeks of summer break 1.5 weeks holiday break 1 week for winter break 1 week for spring break Labor Day Columbus Day Veterans Day Thanksgiving plus Black Friday MLK Day Memorial Day Independence Day All paid
It's funny that you list these as vacation days. I see these days and think "Fuck, now I'm gonna have to work more."
None and however many I want. I work freelance, essentially. I'm hired to teach classes and I have my pick of however many I want to teach or not teach. I also do a lot of private tutoring and that I can pick and choose as well. I don't get paid if I don't work, but I get the benefit of deciding what hours I want to work, what clients I want to take on etc. so I'm more than happy with the trade off. I usually take a full week off at Christmas and one in the summer. Otherwise, it's more based on when I have grad school and when I want a day off, although I take very few of those types of days. I've overloaded myself for the rest of the year as I'm adjuncting two college courses now so I plan to take some extra time off around Christmas and before the spring semester starts at the end of January.
I am self employed and take a little over a month vacation. I could do a lot more though since most of my work can be done electronically. But my last corporate job started at 2 weeks mandatory vacation.
I'm a salaried employee and have 25 working days vacation each year (i work Monday to Friday as do all the other people in my company which is a logistics service provider). When we enter the company we start off with 24 vacation days (all paid) and i believe every 2 years with the company gets you one additional day off until it is capped at 30 days (could be also a yearly increase, would have to check). On top of that you could get extra time for special events. Death of an immediate relative (parents, partner or, god forbid, child) is 3 days, everybody else is 1 day. Moving inside the city 1 day, outside the city 2 days (once a year) For educational purposes, i.e. self organized additional courses or degrees - 5 days a year The mandatary minimum 24 days vacation day is law, the rest are also pretty much standard but vary from state to state to some degree and company depending on union contracts and such. What i have is pretty much standard, maybe a little on the low end concerning my vacation day but then my company could be a bit better when it comes to employee satisfaction. Germany is at the upper end in the world compared to other countries when it comes to vacation days but they are also in the upper levels when it comes to overtime work which i also something that gets registered in my company, it's unpaid unless you get called in to work on a national holiday but all overtime can be used to be off work. If you work much overtime you could get several days off depending on the hours you saved up. So for me it's pretty much shocking to hear others getting no or measly amounts of vacation days, unpaid or flat out denied days off. I don't want to start a "my country is better than yours!" discussion but when i hear things like these i am really glad i live in Germany (also for other reasons like national healthcare).
Retail is the same way, only about 2 or 3 days stores are closed. I hated retail, glad I'm long out of it.
I get 35 days, including the 8 public holidays. You can actually purchase more through a company benefits scheme (I know people with over 40 days). You do lose a little of your monthly take home pay though. We also get two days TOIL if we choose to work a bank holiday, plus sick pay (end extended sick leave cover).
OTOH, when I worked 3rd shift, and worked over into a holiday morning, I'd get double-time holiday premium for 6+ hours. Then I'd still get the holiday evening off.