this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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It depends. Usually if you leave a job and have any unused vacation left over, they have to pay you for that time. There’s a catch though, they do not have to let you carry over your vacation from year to year (use it or lose it), and/ or they can set a cap of how much vacation you can have accrued. In the latter, you can either lose any vacation over that cap, or some employers might be “kind” and let you convert excess vacation into sick time. Sick time does not have to be paid out when you quit.
My employer, for example, allows us to accrue up to 240 hours of vacation time; anything above 240 gets converted to sick time. We can accrue as much sick time as we want. So long as we remain employed, it never expires. We can also apply our sick time toward our retirement.
At my company, it’s not unheard of for employees to stick around for 20+ years before retiring. If you bank all of your sick time, you can apply toward your retirement date and retire up to three years early. And, a lot of people when they retire will have enough vacation available that they can take a month off before officially retiring; and the company does not stop them.
Also it should be noted, I work in the public sector and am considered a state employee. So that helps.
Sounds like teaching.
Why would anyone want to get sick? It it is another american thing?
Sick time can be used when you’re sick, have a doctor’s appointment, or need to take care of family members who are sick or have doctor’s appointments. It is time given to the employee so that they do not have to burn up their vacation time.
Granted, if you run out of sick time, you either have to use vacation, or you take unpaid time off. My state has a sharing system, where other employees can give you some of their sick time. This is usually for extreme circumstances, such as on-going long-term care (e.g., chemotherapy) and the person is out of both sick and vacation time.
I’m sure it sounds weird and possibly convoluted. It probably is weird and convoluted. Employers here don’t trust their employees, so they feel the need to treat us like children. Some employers even require employees to get doctors notes excusing their absence or tardiness.
I’m sure there are some people who would take advantage of any kind of unlimited/untracked sick time. I’m not naive to think everybody would work in the honor system. I think that employers here take it to the extreme, and decided that treating everybody this way was easier than working with those who abuse the system. Might be because we are a litigious society in America; a lot of people looking for any excuse to take someone to court for money.
Anyway, I’ll answer any other questions you have.
It sounds slightly wierd, shlightly convoluted, but mostly inhumane in Europe.
I'm not sure if I have enough questions. Is there a state with functioning labour law, healthcare and welfare systems?