http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129137542

Quote :

"For the first time this year, 1 percent of U.S. businesses say they offer unlimited paid vacation. Why the uptick in unlimited paid leave now? Studies have long shown that — believe it or not — such flexibility actually makes workers more productive and engaged. But Lenny Sanicola, with the human resources group World at Work, which surveys company benefits, suspects something more. Sanicola notes that with all the perks being cut during the recession, vacation time has held its own. "Perhaps not being able to provide other rewards," he says, "some companies said as long as the work gets done and the productivity that we are looking for is achieved, you don't have to track your time and you can take unlimited leave." Of course, Sanicola says this is limited to white-collar professionals. He's never heard of it for hourly employees; you can imagine a factory shutting down without a steady stream of workers. In fact, the U.S. is alone in the industrialized world in that millions of mainly low-wage workers have no paid vacation at all. Some critics worry that in a culture of workaholics, unlimited vacation might really mean no vacation; that without a specified time to be "off" employees might feel pressure to always be "on." The movie subscription service Netflix has had unlimited leave for a decade. At Social Strata, vacation season hasn't changed as dramatically as you might imagine. People must still manage time off around deadlines and work that needs to get done."

We don't need the legislature to mandate time off. All we need to do is make sure workers are free to negotiate their own contracts as they see fit, and workers will work it out with their employers.

8/14/2010 4:44:06 PM

Unlimited vacation is a horrible idea. You don't want your employees feeling guilty about taking it...

8/14/2010 6:33:02 PM

If they get their work done, then why should they feel guilty?

8/14/2010 6:55:14 PM

this only works for businesses with schedules/quotas i would imagine

"as long as x gets done correctly, you should feel free to leave"

you cant just do it as fast as you can and without regard for what the purpose or function of your work is

basically if you feel youve done something to be proud of then you shouldnt feel guilty leaving, but you could be fired at any time for not being held to some standard thats been explained to you previously

8/14/2010 7:09:43 PM

My friend works at a company with unlimited vacation. It's pretty brilliant for the company IMO. People take the same amount of time off, but nobody has to keep track of the days, days don't have to be "saved" or "lost", and unused vacation can't be converted into money if someone leaves.

8/14/2010 8:48:30 PM

paid unlimited vacation is a right.

8/14/2010 9:58:54 PM

I'd think that unlimited unpaid leave would be similarly useful to blue collar workers. I'd certainly work a shitty job if it gave me flexibility.

8/14/2010 10:50:28 PM

Translation: you best not take any more days off then you usually would or your ass is gone, and now we don't have to pay you for when we lay you off and you have vacation days saved up.

8/15/2010 12:14:28 AM

I know it is a bad policy. But if I knew a politician would mandate unlimited paid vacations or even just a 30 hour work week...I would vote for him.

8/15/2010 2:57:25 AM

I get unlimited sick days. The result is that no one ever takes any.

8/15/2010 4:01:13 PM

Well, sick days is one thing. Does anyone here have unlimited vacation days and not use any?

8/16/2010 12:42:18 AM

I have a limited number and I still don't use them all. It sounds nice, just get your work done and take as many as you want. Unfortunately this puts a LOT of weight on management to judge fairly. Anyone who works in an office here should know that it's very easy to notice if someone is there or not, and much more difficult to know if someone is doing their job well.

8/16/2010 1:07:10 AM

What's good for the President, is good for any company.

8/16/2010 3:55:46 AM

Quote :

"We don't need the legislature to mandate time off. All we need to do is make sure workers are free to negotiate their own contracts as they see fit, and workers will work it out with their employers."

So this guarantees that all employees will have such a freedom and such an understanding employer. Glad that we settled that. Also, from the article:

Quote :

"In fact, the U.S. is alone in the industrialized world in that millions of mainly low-wage workers have no paid vacation at all."

8/16/2010 7:33:11 AM

Quote :

"In fact, the U.S. is alone in the industrialized world in that millions of mainly low-wage workers have no paid vacation at all.""

They call those part timers

8/16/2010 9:05:56 AM

Quote :

"We don't need the legislature to mandate time off. All we need to do is make sure workers are free to negotiate their own contracts as they see fit, and workers will work it out with their employers."

I don't understand the connection between this and the original article.

8/16/2010 9:08:15 AM

Freedom produces diversity or arrangements and then allows people to seek their preferred arrangement. The article shows the first and implies the second. That is all.

8/16/2010 10:31:39 AM

Unlimited vacation sounds good in theory, but honestly I'd just rather know how much I can take per year. Because I take every last hour of my vacation. If it was unlimited, I would be worried about how many hours my peers are taking and making sure not to take more than them.

Plus, my work is never really "done". There's always something to do, so I couldn't really use that as a barometer either.

8/16/2010 10:38:32 AM

Quote :

"We don't need the legislature to mandate time off. All we need to do is make sure workers are free to negotiate their own contracts as they see fit, and workers will work it out with their employers."

Now come on..we NEED the gov't to tell employers how much to pay their people. We need the min. wage. Gov't politicians are much smarter than employers. We need them to tell us how to run our businesses.

With the gov't taking all these mundane decisions off our backs, we can have more time to write out and send all those hundreds of new 1099 forms that will be required next year..(as part of health care reform ????)

8/16/2010 10:52:57 AM

Quote :

"Now come on..we NEED the gov't to tell employers how much to pay their people. We need the min. wage primarily for non-white collar labor. Gov't politicians are much smarter than employers supposedly looking out for the labor constituency that has historically needed such legislation. We need them to tell us how to run certain labor practices within our businesses."

there i fixed it for you.



[Edited on August 16, 2010 at 11:01 AM. Reason : ]

8/16/2010 11:01:47 AM

Quote :

"Freedom produces diversity or arrangements and then allows people to seek their preferred arrangement. The article shows the first and implies the second. That is all."

I could see that.

I guess my problem with it then is that those arangments generally need to be helped by the government in the less competitive seller-heavy markets of unskilled labor, which this article has nothing to do with.

8/16/2010 11:14:25 AM

Quote :

"there i fixed it for you."

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people unemployed as a result of the minimum wage. Maybe we shouldn't be telling people how much they're allowed to work for.

8/16/2010 11:19:11 AM

Quote :

"Sanicola notes that with all the perks being cut during the recession, vacation time has held its own."

Not really. We went from 10 sick days to 6. They've also furloughed 6 days around Thanksgiving/Christmas, forcing you to take 6 days vacation if you want to get paid. To me that equates to several less vacation days per year since I wouldn't ordinarily use that many days so close together and when the weather sucks to boot.

I could see companies wanting to do this just to get the liabilities of vacation hours off the books. That's one of the reasons they do furloughs. I guess this would get the vacation liability down to $0? So essentially this:

Quote :

"now we don't have to pay you for when we lay you off and you have vacation days saved up"

With a side advantage of this:

Quote :

"Unlimited vacation sounds good in theory, but honestly I'd just rather know how much I can take per year. Because I take every last hour of my vacation. If it was unlimited, I would be worried about how many hours my peers are taking and making sure not to take more than them. Plus, my work is never really "done". There's always something to do, so I couldn't really use that as a barometer either."

In the current labor culture companies aren't going to do anything that helps the employees... unless it helps them more.

[Edited on August 16, 2010 at 11:37 AM. Reason : -]

8/16/2010 11:35:57 AM

Quote :

"I guess my problem with it then is that those arangments generally need to be helped by the government in the less competitive seller-heavy markets of unskilled labor, which this article has nothing to do with."

Such markets are often seller heavy because of government help. Any employer not able to pay $X is illegal and will be prosecuted.

8/16/2010 11:59:41 AM

Quote :

"Such markets are often seller heavy because of government help."

Throughout history unskilled labor has always been seller heavy. That excuse just doesn't work here.

8/16/2010 12:32:32 PM

I could really go for that. I'd love to use a lot more vacation time. I don't think it'd be looked negatively on. I've only been with my company for 2 years, thus I'm fairly low on the ladder of "paid time off" allowances. We have a tiered system so the longer you've worked here the more time you get. If someone else can take off 30 paid days a year what difference would it make if I did the same, instead of the 17 I currently get?

*we also have no sick time at our company. If you're out of vacation time and fall ill you can potentially be fired. As a result I always keep 2-3 days in my pocket in case I get sick.

8/16/2010 2:08:58 PM

Quote :

"Throughout history unskilled labor has always been seller heavy. That excuse just doesn't work here."

Untrue. Under the Soviet Union, managers did not themselves face any costs for growing their workforce, so unemployment was non-existent. Similarly, in the pre-capitalist era of England, the government imposed a maximum wage for landed serfs. In both instances, employers were freed from the market price of labor, and therefore the markets were buyer heavy, as economics would predict.

Well, now the law is reversed. Employers face costs in excess of the market price of unskilled labor, and as a result unskilled labor is seller heavy, as economics would predict.

[Edited on August 16, 2010 at 2:26 PM. Reason : .,.]

8/16/2010 2:22:27 PM

Finding a small exception doesn't invalidate the point. Monopsony in the unskilled labor market is the natural state. If you need more evidence then I would simply point to the numerous countries without minimium wage laws that, GASP, have unskilled labor markets that are seller heavy.

8/16/2010 2:32:31 PM

I know of no country without a minimum wage, other than Cuba. I'm not even sure of that. Yes, in history minimum wage rules have often been imposed through methods other than statute, such as Guilds or local Cartels, either legal or illegal.

But, fine, even if your magic theory about unskilled markets being special are right, is it really better to take a systemic feature which may exist and purposefully make it worse?

8/16/2010 2:45:31 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country

Quote :

"But, fine, even if your magic theory about unskilled markets being special are right, is it really better to take a systemic feature which may exist and purposefully make it worse?"

I wouldn't call it magical, and I certainly wouldn't call it mine, the need for unskilled labor to bargian was understood long before I was born. It's a fairly widely known example of a natural market failure. And it's really not even that they are special. A fair market requires this precise balancing act between all of these factors for it to work perfectly, this is just one that you don't have to inspect closely to see it's failure.

But yes, I do feel it is better to at least try to fix the failure, you may be right, and we may make it worse, but over time, we will naturally become better and better at it.

8/16/2010 2:55:42 PM

The plane will take off

8/16/2010 3:12:47 PM

Quote :

"I'd love to use a lot more vacation time. I don't think it'd be looked negatively on. I've only been with my company for 2 years, thus I'm fairly low on the ladder of "paid time off" allowances. We have a tiered system so the longer you've worked here the more time you get. If someone else can take off 30 paid days a year what difference would it make if I did the same, instead of the 17 I currently get? *we also have no sick time at our company. If you're out of vacation time and fall ill you can potentially be fired. As a result I always keep 2-3 days in my pocket in case I get sick. "

My company has the same tiered vacation policy. This year I get 2 weeks and next year for my 3rd year i upgrade to 3 weeks. Eventhough
I will be at 3 weeks until my 15th year, we do get a "bonus" 2 weeks every 5 years. So in the year of my 5th anniversary I will have 5 weeks vacation.
The old timers get 5 weeks after 25 years. Currently we have one guy who has been here 25 and another who has been here 30 years. They both get the 5 weeks
plus the 2 "bonus" weeks for a total of 7 lol.

That sucks Pat about sick time. Luckily here sick days ( including children) do not count, at least for those of us on salary. Hell I feel like one of the new
mothers in our group has had off at least 12 days (not counting vacation) this years because her toddler is sick every other week with the sniffles. We also get beravement.
I was out two days last month to attend my grandfathers funeral.

8/16/2010 3:31:16 PM