Antiwork

[Jimjamesak]

I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot at my job.

90% of my various video feeds are Whose Line Is It Anyway clips. It wasn’t easy but I got it done.

[burd]

Solo law was simple: Eat what you kill.

Nice also to have the freedom to pay my assistant of 25 years a salary with no leave limitations and give bonuses when the kills were good. The main downside to sole practice is that there is no one there to provide the service but you, but the autonomy is certainly great.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

"Unlimited" PTO is a marketing scam, nothing more. At my current firm we have it, but it is at least combined with a quarterly utilization bonus for high billers. The bonus is tiered based on your utilization percentage, and 85% or more qualifies. So basically, if you want any bonus at all, you get 1 week off per quarter whether it's sick, vacation, or personal time. If you don't care about getting a bonus, take the extra time and make it up next quarter. *shrug*

So it works OK in consulting, but certainly not so great in other industries.

[Swansong]

Unlimited PTO sounds amazing, but absolutely wouldn't work in all industries. Also there's this:
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article...-paid-time-off

Yet there are also a number of companies that have experimented with UPTO only to end the policy and pronounce it a failure. Workers often end up taking less time off than they did with a fixed policy. A 2018 survey showed workers with UPTO took fewer holidays than those with a fixed allocation; according to another poll, one-third of US workers with UPTO always work on holiday.

US-based networking company Facet is one company that abandoned UPTO after it found its workers were taking fewer holidays. The CEO of London-based recruiting company Unknown, meanwhile, went viral in a LinkedIn post that explained the firm cancelled its UPTO scheme after people felt guilty and never took time off. (They’ve instead transitioned to giving 32 paid days off, universally across the ranks.)

Part of the problem is that in some companies, taking leave is something many workers don't do often enough – a phenomenon particularly pronounced in the US. "People don't take vacations now, even when they're accrued," says Peter Cappelli, professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, US, and director of its Center for Human Resources. “The reason is there's pressure on them not to do it."

Granting unlimited paid holiday doesn’t make these problems go away – in fact, it can make them worse. With UPTO, workers are not technically owed any vacation days, since there's no fixed number, and everything must be cleared by the boss on a case-by-case basis. For workers, establishing what the ‘right’ amount of paid time off to ask for often depends on observing the behaviour of colleagues and bosses. If colleagues are only taking 10 days per year, asking for more could feel inappropriate.

[ScoobyDoo]

I have it a little easier. Unlimited PTO which is used for everything. I come and go as I please and I work from home, or the office as I please. I have KPI Metrics, and a bonus program to keep me in line.

[Scarlet]

We have FTO (Flexible Time Off) that is to be used for everything (sick, vacation, any other kind of time off). We can carry up to 20 days every year. We also get four personal holidays - these have to be used or they're gone so vacation or no, I try to charge my time to personal holidays at the start of the year so I don't lose them. As I have been with the company coming on 24 years, I am at the max number of weeks for FTO - 6 weeks. I have also been carrying over the 20 days for several years. So at the start of the year, I take the 20 days off the top and it comes to having to use 34 days for the calendar year. I try not to dip into the 20 days as I am supposed to get them as pay if I ever leave.

For holidays we get NY Day, MLK Day, Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, day after Thanksgiving (my fave) and Christmas. Our office used to get Patriots Day off as the building is located at the end of the Boston Marathon route and it was too difficult to get into the city that day. We would have to work on Columbus Day while the rest of the Massachusetts offices would have that day off and have to work Patriots Day. During the Pandemic, they took away Patriots Day and gave us the 4th personal day. Last week we were told they're now giving us Junteenth and Veteran's Day in 2024 and taking us back down to three personal days.

[Slap Shot]

One positive of working outside the US:

-I earn 20 hours per month of PTO that can be used for any valid absence type
-We earn an additonal 8 more hours for any day in which we work on a local federal holiday that can also be used like PTO
-Unused hours up to 160 are paid back as taxable income every February
-Mat leave is paid 105 days, PAT leave is paid 7 days
-3 paid days of bereavement for immediate family members that does not come out of PTO

Wife still wants to move back.

[Swansong]

I have one bucket and it carries over, and is used for everything from sick time to vacation to holiday. My new parent company is overhauling everything and my net change is to lose about 8 hours of PTO per year, and my max bank amount goes from north of 500 hours to just under 400. If I do go over the banked amount, it dumps into a short-term disability pool. Also, two days worth of my new time isn't accrued, but in the form of use-it-or-lose-it floater days.

Overall, my math is this:

- Net loss of 8 hours per year
- 16 hours become floater days and do not accrue or carry over, no payout for them when leaving
- over max bank time moves to short term disability pool, which does not payout when leaving


My smaller hospital didn't pay well but was very generous with time off. New parent company (now that I'm part of the shared services) pays much better but time off is a good bit less. I have almost 400 hours available right now so I'll already by right up against my max banked time. They've said they plan to pay out overages up front, but I don't know how that will work. Like, if my max is 400 hours and I'm at 440, will they pay me 40 hours and then I'm immediately dumping into the st pool? Or will they pay me 80 hours and give me a chance to stay under? Unclear.

[WisconsinWildcard]

By the time I left my government job I had something like 500 hours of accumulated sick time saved up. Was a nice rainy day fund in case I ever got a long term illness/ car wreck/ whatever. No longer had to worry about taking unpaid FMLA time since that would cover the whole 12 weeks if needed. Thankfully I never ended up needing to use it. For retirees, they get to use their unused sick time balance to cover health insurance in retirement until they become Medicare eligible.

Got paid out for roughly 3 weeks of vacation when I left, too. Max accumulation of that was 2x annual accrual, which at that point I was getting 4.5 weeks of vacation per year, so in theory I could've saved up to nine weeks before i hit the use it or lose it point. That was never going to happen with me, though.

Yeah, that's a government scenario, not a private one, but it's been borne out repeatedly that a switch from sick/vacation leave to a single PTO benefits employers more than employees in the aggregate.

Next you'll try to tell us that the move from pensions to 401ks was a win for employees, too.

Same deal for my job. Sick leave can accumulate indefinitely, can be used for health insurance after retirement. Also felt good to have enough to get me through the disability waiting period (hopefully never have to use that!). Vacation time is separate and can only roll over 1 year worth of vacation hours.

[unofan]

So you had unlimited paid sick time at 3M? You could just call in sick for the next three years and they'd pay you your salary or wage?

By the time I left my government job I had something like 500 hours of accumulated sick time saved up. Was a nice rainy day fund in case I ever got a long term illness/ car wreck/ whatever. No longer had to worry about taking unpaid FMLA time since that would cover the whole 12 weeks if needed. Thankfully I never ended up needing to use it. For retirees, they get to use their unused sick time balance to cover health insurance in retirement until they become Medicare eligible.

Got paid out for roughly 3 weeks of vacation when I left, too. Max accumulation of that was 2x annual accrual, which at that point I was getting 4.5 weeks of vacation per year, so in theory I could've saved up to nine weeks before i hit the use it or lose it point. That was never going to happen with me, though.

Yeah, that's a government scenario, not a private one, but it's been borne out repeatedly that a switch from sick/vacation leave to a single PTO benefits employers more than employees in the aggregate.

Next you'll try to tell us that the move from pensions to 401ks was a win for employees, too.

[dxmnkd316]

it hurts because we don't lose vacation for being sick. It's absolutely baffling how you don't understand this. I had effectively unlimited sick time prior to this. Now we have to use vacation. We don't get any additional vacation.

.

[SJHovey]

it hurts because we don't lose vacation for being sick. It's absolutely baffling how you don't understand this. I had effectively unlimited sick time prior to this. Now we have to use vacation. We don't get any additional vacation.

So you had unlimited paid sick time at 3M? You could just call in sick for the next three years and they'd pay you your salary or wage?

[dxmnkd316]

Oh and I'm much rather have my coworkers not have to make the decision to use vacation or come in sick. Because they would necessarily be using my vacation time now by coming to work sick. it spreads the colds around the office and eventually I will get sick and need to use vacation.

[dxmnkd316]

It is most certainly due to the new Minnesota leave law.

On January 1 Minnesota's new Sick and Safe Time leave law goes into effect. It is very broad in terms of its scope, certainly far broader than most standard sick leave policies (to the extent employers even still use them).

It is broad in terms of the incidents that trigger your right to time off. Not only is it your illness, but it's for the illnesses of an extremely broad array of related and unrelated people, including the right to annually designate some random person. So if you decide to nominate your neighbor Bob for this year, and Bob gets sick, you can take your paid sick and safe time leave.

It covers time off for illnesses, but also because of criminal justice events you might have to participate in, for road closures due to weather, etc... Certainly way broader than 3M's current sick leave policy.

You also get to carry some over.

But here's the deal with it. The law also says that if the employer has a paid time off policy in place that allows employees to be absent for all of the things that Sick and Safe time mandates, you can just use your PTO policy.

The last thing an employer wants to do is have a sick leave policy, a sick and safe time policy, a vacation policy, etc... Just roll it into one grouping and call it PTO.

We did this maybe 20 years ago, and our employees had the same initial reaction you did. If you asked them today, they'd never go back.

I don't care why my employees are going to be gone. I'm not interested in making them come up with an excuse, and they're not interested in coming up with an excuse. Just tell me you're going to be gone, and when, and tell me as soon as practicable. That's what employers want.

Wrong on several accounts

it is NOT because of the law. The law does not say you can't offer sick time in addition to vacation. It simply set the minimum standard and the company regressed to that.

second, no, we don't get carryover. Only hourly workers are provided that

third, employers want PTO because then they don't need to pay vacation at 100%. It's now the time worker who has to either work sick or sacrifice vacation.

[dxmnkd316]

First, in Minnesota employers have never had to pay out unused vacation time, unless it's their policy or practice to do so. Having a PTO policy that doesn't require a payout doesn't change anything for employers.

Second, the new Sick and Safe time paid leave law doesn't require payout of that either upon separation. So, rolling it into a general PTO policy doesn't save the employers anything.

Third, if you are an employee, wouldn't you rather have it all rolled into PTO, that you can use for any reason, rather than having say six days of it allocated for instances only where you are sick, or a family member is sick or a family member is in court for a domestic violence issue? Even as broad as the SST law permits usage?

If someone has to go home and care for their child who is sick, it's not like 3M can deny that. Their PTO policy has to be at least as generous as the SST leave mandated by law. How does rolling into a general classification of PTO hurt dx?

it hurts because we don't lose vacation for being sick. It's absolutely baffling how you don't understand this. I had effectively unlimited sick time prior to this. Now we have to use vacation. We don't get any additional vacation.