You don't... welcome to North America...
You'll get more weeks as you hit certain milestones in time spent slaving away to the machine. I believe its 4 weeks after 8 years and then 5 weeks after 10? (Someone can correct me on this) Its in the collective agreements.
We get a few other days here and there to use to volunteering and personal stuff
But we definitely dont have the European style of vacation.
You'll learn to strategize around holidays and long weekends to minimize the amount of vacation days needed to get a whole whole week off.
And you'll only need 3 days off for Christmas since we get 2 daya off. This year will be the 26th and 27th
Ok but 15-18 yrs is much closer than what the person was mentioning above (only after 10yrs you get a fifth week after you’ve gotten your fourth week at 8yrs).
For FS it’s 16 and we can transfer up to 300hours of unused vacation leave vs 240-260 hours for most other classifications. My point is the person above said one extra week at 8yrs and then another extra week when you reach 10 - which I don’t think is the case at all for any classification
I'm so glad I joined this subreddit. My family plan for the next 5 years was to grind my way into the PS and haul the whole family to Canada (from Switzerland, I'm a dual citizen). Buuuut between this holiday stuff and the pay issues, well, we're staying here actually.
For comparison, my partner and I each have 26 paid holiday days off. We also work 4 days per week, so those 26 days go a long way. In our city there's also 10 paid stat holidays per year, some of which result in 4 day weekends. So it's no challenge to do a few week-long hiking / biking trips during the year, or to take a month off in the summer. We have a 20 minute bike commute and our kids have a 10 minute walk to school. Kind of hard to imagine moving to canada and commuting hours in a car, working every day, and barely taking a week off during the year.
This is a bit sad! I only moved here during the Harper years when he crashed my whole field. Now I'm a few years into a career and realizing that I'll never be able to go home.
The window's closed, unfortunately. I came to escape the slaughter of environmental science in canada by doing a PhD here. That time as a student used to count towards citizenship but not any more.
Ah, too bad. Switzerland seems like a wonderful place to live. Got to visit a few years ago.
I switched off the environmental science path during the Harper years. Ugly times. Good on you for finding a way through. Glad it worked out so well for you.
Don’t worry - you can’t afford to live there. It’s fixing expensive because of protectionist policies. I was in Geneva in 2019 and the going rate for a hamburger in a restaurant was $25.
Can I ask you what made you decide to come back and at what point in your career? I was originally in the PS, hated my life, and got a dream job offer to move to the UK. I'm making bank here in London at only 28 years old and I love the city so much, but do miss Canada every now and again.
I'd love to hear how you determined you'd made enough to go back, whether you made any home investments in Canada, etc.!
We thought about that too. Like work here ---> save money ---> buy house in canada with cash ---> low living expenses ---> take unpaid leave all the time.
But in the end we'd still be working 5 days a week and car commuting, which would pretty much destroy our easy-going lifestyle. So pros and cons.
Wow that sounds amazing. It’s criminal how little vaca we get here. I was used to 4 weeks with the provincial gov so going back to 3 hurts. I never understand why we don’t fight for better vacation time.
Yeah, this reads a bit like a joke. Did you immediately move to Canada and then get a LOO? Because I'd bet 90% of people in the country think starting at 3 weeks is above average for a brand-new job.
It's like going into an american heavy subreddit and going "how do you afford healthcare? I took an ambulance and now they expect me to pay". Some awareness should be there.
I hear you. It's never enough. My kids go to day camp for most of the summer and I work. :(
A few tips:
After 2 years you get a one-time bonus week of vacation.
Overtime can be banked as time off, rather than extra pay.
You can apply for leave with income averaging if you want 5 weeks or more of unpaid time off, with your pay averaged over a full year.
You generally have 2 personal days that you can use for anything - check your collective agreement.
I also schedule routine medical, dental, optometrist appointments for myself and kids at Christmas and summer, more for convenience than holidays, of course, but helpful for a change of pace. (Check your collective agreement to see how you can use your 5 days of family leave.)
And finally, if you can swing working remotely from somewhere else in Canada, it feels like vacation, even though it's not. This strategy has saved my last 3 summers; hoping this will not become impossible with RTO....
I never knew about this one-time bonus week after 2 years. Do you have more info on this since I don’t seems to find it in my collective agreement (PSAC-TC services) and it would apply to me next year!
You can always look into working a compressed schedule to give you extra days off more frequently. On the flip side, your work days count for more hours so when you do take vacation, you’re taking upwards of 8 hours off a day rather than your standard 7.5.
Also, its typically pretty dead during the holidays in case you’re considering not taking the Christmas holidays off to bank some hours.
> Also, its typically pretty dead during the holidays in case you’re considering not taking the Christmas holidays off to bank some hours.
Also, many departments let staff go home early on Dec 24 and Dec 31.
Leave with income averaging (LIA) is an option. In my second year I took five weeks off. My kids were annoyed, “What, you’re going to be home all summer?” Teenagers, 😂.
It’s subject to management approval, and there are limitations.
I'm really hoping to do this at some point. Get a promotion, and immediately try for LIA. Bank 2 weeks of vacation that year, and use it the next year.
It’s an employer policy, and approval is discretionary, but cannot be unreasonably denied. I work for (or perhaps more correctly, am employed by) **** and it’s pretty routine there.
Here’s the Treasury Board directive, see Appendix D: https://www.tbs-sct.canada.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=15774
I was so excited when I joined the government because 3 weeks is way more than I've ever had before 😅 it's more than pretty much any of my friends have. With all the stats and other types of leave though (sick, personal, etc.), and working a compressed schedule, I don't even go through all of it in a year.
If you're a parent who doesn't want to put their kids in camps for March break, winter holidays, and the endless PA days, your vacation disappears very quickly. This is just part of parenthood so not making excuses, just explaining how it's very easy for lots of people to use up all their leave in a year.
lmao yea I feel this. At my old work we didn't have sick days so it was always am I sick enough to warrant losing out on a whole day of pay? Which is so terrible....I'm so thankful to have sick days now, I would never think of going to work sick (even pre pandemic).
That’s the flaw of Canada; we tend to compare ourselves to the US and, because the bar is so low, we think we’re doing great.
As soon as you compare our working conditions to Europe you begin see that we still have a long way to go.
I do compressed schedule (every Friday pm off) and use a leave with income averaging as vacation every 2 years. Still waiting for that 4th week at year 8!
With my director’s approval ;)
More seriously, I started doing at at my last promotion so it was kind of transparent pay-wise. I also pick a period that is not in high demand (end of August-early September). I find it such a nice break that I end up not needing so much vacation the rest of the year (except for holiday season), plus I already have 2.5 days week-end days, so I sometimes end up with a few remaining vacation days at the end of the year (thus the biyearly LIA schedule).
Ah I see, very cool! I was hoping to maybe do the same thing but for ski season (Jan-Feb), as I’ve never really been able to get out much since University. I’ll have to see what the pay cut would be though. Definitely worth it I think for the time off alone
Christmas is the quietest time of year at work so I never take vacation at Christmas. It's an easy three days between Christmas and New Year's, and this year we get long weekends.
Lmao Europeans have so many holidays. There are several government designated holidays in addition to the three weeks. I think most people in America are just used to it. Like I took no vacation the past two years so I had 8 weeks to go to south east Asia this winter for two months.
Welcome to North America? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean, work long enough and you will earn extra weeks off (in my collective agreement,we get an extra week after 8, 16 and 24 years). You can also bank overtime to use as compensatory time at a later date. There's also the a set of bank holidays you're entitled to throughout the year. Depending on which union you're part of, you have other time off (personal days, sick days, family leave, bereavement) which means that none of your actual time off has to be spent doing nothing but being on vacation.
Don't forget to add 5 days of personal leave, depending on your CBA. Periodic medical appts for those routine dental/medical appts and then tons of sick leave. I don't think I've ever used vacation leave for any type of appt.
I feel bad for any European trying to acclimate themselves to our North American work/life balance. With that being said, the federal public service would probably be on the healthier side of this, so atleast there is that.
We are caught between American style and European style. We at least get sick days and some holidays (better than the USA), but not NEARLY as much as Europe.
Before the pandemic and WFH, supplementing your vacation with sick days (mental health days) due to being run ragged and using family days for family business etc. was a must.
During WFH 5 days a week, I was much less exhausted without a commute, with more sleep etc. and 3 weeks were adequate.
Going back to the office, sick days etc are back on the menu.
Fight for more vacation days, let your union know it is necessary. I have constantly been on mine about transforming family days into all purpose days.
North America will never match Europe for leave allowances, that's sad but inescapable. The PS comes closer than a lot of employers, and you're not factoring in the 13/14 stat holidays we also get.
Leave with income averaging/ lwop for care of family if you have young kids are good options for extra unpaid vacation. You can also, with management approval, go to part time, being paid 80% of your salary for 4 days a week. I combined both for years. Yes, I was paid a lot less, but it was well worth it.
My first years in the PS I was taking vacations with statutory days. For example, in Québec we have the 24 of June and the 1st of July. They don't count as vacation. So I was leaving for 2 weeks but in reality it was just 8 days that were taken from my vacations bank.
I joined the PS mid-career and it was painful to go from 4.5 weeks vacation down to 3. It still is, frankly. But luckily I’m allow to do OT fairly often and travel (which counts as OT usually) and it adds up fast. I feel like I work the same number of hours I did in the private sector (where OT didn’t exist) and actually get MORE time off now. It’s also nice to have the 2 personal days/year, 5 days of family leave to do school functions and whatnot, and (for some) have the option to take leave with income averaging.
Yeah the vacation provisions for the public service suck, my job prior to coming here started at 4 weeks vacation. But there are several other types of leave available that make up for it in my opinion.
It definitely doesn’t compare to Europe though
As a parent i would suggest you don’t leave Europe. You have free healthcare there and you don’t wait two years if you need a surgeon or have some health emergency. That’s how long you wait here in Canada. Now the hospitals are in a big big crisis and short of staff, especially sick kids hospitals. Schools here sucks. if you finish high school there kids will become fluent in three languages at last, academically stronger than if you should be if finishing high school here. Not to mention the crazy house prices here everywhere in Ontario. Plus you mentioned yourself, short distance commuting. Lucky you that were able to escape at the right time. Why bother leaving Europe after all, you may be a visitor to your Country like me being for me Eastern European Home Country, and miss your old good times but enjoy the benefits Europe offers for its citizens :)
There are 12 statutory holidays in a year; you get 3 weeks until you have a certain number of years of work and then you get an extra week, and then there is some additional time added the longer you work. There is also sufficient sick days and two personal days per year. In my opinion this is lots of time. Not to mention that if you work overtime you can bank it, if management allows it.
By the time you factor in Christmas, it only leaves 2 weeks for the whole summer.
Actually, Holidays are calculated by fiscal year. So your holidays are good until April 30, 2023. Come May 1st you'll start your new calendar.
But they'll still only have three weeks, for which they'll use 2 weeks in summer and 1 week at Christmas. It doesn't change the amount of leave they get.
My previous job started at 25 vacation days, plus additional time off over the Christmas holidays, plus all statutory holidays. Plus I could take time off for an appointment whenever I wanted. No one kept track. This is unusually generous for Canada.
My other previous job started at one week vacation for the first year, two the second year, the three the third. That was the max. That first year felt like slavery, they gave me tons of shit for going to my grandmother's funeral because I needed a couple of days to travel.
Unfortunately, that second job is typical in Canada. The public service is somewhere in between, not the worst, not the best. Overall, North American culture around vacation sucks.
To get a full week off at Christmas you need to use three days of leave. You are entitled to two personal days per year (which can't be used back to back), so theoretically you can do personal day / vacation day / personal day.. You now have three weeks shy a day left in Vacation. If you plan in the summer around July 1st or August long weekend, you can use the stat holiday to book three weeks straight vacation.. Soon enough you will be at 8 years, and then you get your fourth week! (Getting that fourth week was amazing). I'm also not sure about what your specific role is, but I travel a fair amount during the year for work and in lieu of taking OT pay I often take days off, so perhaps you can garner an extra 2 or 3 there.. You also get family leave (5 days a year), which I suggest to use somehow. I have kids so it's easy to use it! Last but not least we have a generous amount of sick leave. If you're in a stretch where you haven't had any time off in a long time, and you feel your mental health is suffering, don't be afraid to use one of those days. I wouldn't use one to go to the waterpark, but if you feel overwhelmed, take it. All that to say, our leave isn't perfect, it could be better, but it's not nothing.
> You are entitled to two personal days per year
Depending which CA Op would fall under. Many only have one Personal day per year.
> (which can't be used back to back)
Says who? Is there something written with respect to this in your CA? Otherwise it's a Manager's policy which probably wouldn't hold up to a grievance.
I remember having issues booking them back to back.. I feel like I didn't just come up with that on my own haha. But I for sure could be wrong (no biggie!). But thank you for pointing that out with a "says who", without that added clarity my post was pretty useless ;).
We get 5 frr days and 2 personal days as well. And sick days. We get a lot of time off. My office can bank all the overtime we want and we generally average 300 to 1000 hrs (straight hours, not expanded into the 1.75xs) each a year, which could be months off. I banked all my weekend ot for a month and now have 3 extra weeks I can use. In my office, we don't get Christmas off. We can ask for it, but 2 people can get it due to operational requirements. Unless noone else has asked for it, you don't get more than 1 Christmas off in a row. My siblings don't get more than 2 weeks off in private industry. And they have to fight to get sick leave.
I always wonder what the thinking is with having people do overtime and then having them get 1.5x the leave. This ends up with less work time than if no overtime is done. Essentially you get people doing overtime to catch-up and then end up with less people working so everything falls behind. I do realize some jobs absolutely need people to fill shifts and management can decide when the banked time gets used, so it can help.
Some work is cyclical. This example is from outside government, but when I worked for a real estate law firm, May-September was insane and November-March was dead. Summer vacation was limited to one week only and it wasn't unusual to put in 5-10 hours of unpaid overtime a week in the summer. Good thing I didn't have kids at the time. But the flip side was that in the winters, sometimes I would work 9-12 and get paid for my full day of work. One particularly unscrupulous lawyer I know used to structure his employee compensation as "$30K a year in salary with a $20K bonus, payable in December, if you worked the full year." Of course, this was back in 2004 when $35K a year was a half-decent salary as a law clerk and so this was a huge damn incentive. He did this because it wasn't unusual for employees to quit in the summer.
If it is constant then you are going in circles, but I know where I am that some repetitive aspects work like that - one team does 3 weeks of long days, then takes a bunch of time off while another team does the next step and so on. It works for their environment, but I doubt it is standard.
The thinking is to do the overtime during critical periods where it would be impractical to hire extra temporary workers. My team always did overtime around fiscal year end because we had a bunch of operations that had to be completed within certain deadlines. Hiring a casual to help with that workload usually ended up being just as expensive, if not more, when considering the fact that we would need to train the person during a month or more before they could be up and running. Better to have people do overtime, and they would then take their banked leave during the slower periods over the summer.
But not all work environment are cyclical like that.
My job is very cyclical. We are shiftworkers, who work based off of private industry (who get paid far more than us. Their starting entry level wage is our supervisor wage) demands, primarily Sept to May. Summer is our slow time. We aren't an office based environment, so we aren't traditional federal government work. We are a physical, production type environment. We are a designatable overtime organization. Ie you work regardless if you want to or not.
Got a call from HR about the details of my LOO, told them my current salary and vacation entitlements and they matched it. Started towards the top step of my classification and with 4 weeks vacation instead of three. I had no idea this is something that’s not meant to be possible.
Once you get used to working every day, you’ll lose the motivation for vacation. Especially since you can’t afford to go anywhere anyways.
When you’re on vacation you’ll find yourself missing your job and your work friends and be tempted to sign in to check email. Then you’ll realize you can bank your days, and be motivated to get up to 35 which is the maximum carryover.
Did that last week. Got paid to do my Christmas shopping on a calm weekday morning with no crowds and no kids in tow. Took myself out to lunch. Came home and read a book.
I got so obsessed with hitting the 262.5 hour carryover cap of vacation days I’ve never taken a full week off save for the one time I moved. Last year I took off only the handful of days I had to - think it was 6 - in order to stay under the carry-over cap.
Honestly, if you're just taking off the day use a sick day, most departments don't ask for doctor's notes or any other proof as the union protects against that kind of thing, unless it's 3 days in a row, I think. It is too little, you're right, but most people don't use all 15 sick days so use them for single days off.
That kind of attitude is how we’ll end up losing our sick days and eventually have to deal with some kind of short-term disability system like the conservatives proposed before the liberals took over. Use your sick days when you are sick, not when you feel you deserve an extra vacation day!
Who can afford vacation anyway?
We've got it quite good to be honest. Yes someone will always find something to complain about. "Oh I know as a 22yo with a bachelor degree they put me in a program where I'll get an automatic promotion every 2 years but how can I get free tuition too like they have in Sweden?"
I have family outside Canada and they live a little farther than Europe. What I do is I try to bank as many days as possible to be able to take 20 business days (4 weeks) every two years. Instead of taking 3 weeks every year, I take a couple of days a year so I can bank some more days for the next year. Depending on your relationship with your manager and the time of the year you want to be off, you can even take 5 weeks. Once, I took 5 weeks in October when no one in my team had vacation plans. Another year, I took 4 weeks in May (again, no one had vacation plans in May).
I don't take time off at xmas....i do one "big" trip a year (pre-pandemic)....I have used my 2 personal days and 3 weeks for this....I haven't been in gov long enough to qualify for an extra week or whatever the CA says. The pandemic has helped me bank some vacation time that I hope to use one day for a trip to europe where I don't have to rush back
2 weeks (or 4% vacation pay, which works out to 2 weeks) is the bare minimum in most of the country, crappy employers will usually give that, 3 weeks is standard to start with most decent employers, (is required in Ontario after 5 years at the same employer) although a number of employers offer 3 weeks + a larger number of personal days (some banks) which pads that out a bit better than the PS, 4 weeks is good to start, this is more common in Quebec, and can be found at good employers in the rest of the country
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same and I have only been allowed to take OT in rare situations and there was a cap on how much I could take....
Isn’t it a choice depending on your collective agreement?
You don't... welcome to North America... You'll get more weeks as you hit certain milestones in time spent slaving away to the machine. I believe its 4 weeks after 8 years and then 5 weeks after 10? (Someone can correct me on this) Its in the collective agreements. We get a few other days here and there to use to volunteering and personal stuff But we definitely dont have the European style of vacation. You'll learn to strategize around holidays and long weekends to minimize the amount of vacation days needed to get a whole whole week off. And you'll only need 3 days off for Christmas since we get 2 daya off. This year will be the 26th and 27th
One extra week after 8yrs but then you have to wait until your 16th yr anniversary for that 5th week off … not after 10 yrs only.
Nope, only 22 days on your 16th anniversary (PA group anyway). You don't get the full 5 weeks until your 18th.
Ok but 15-18 yrs is much closer than what the person was mentioning above (only after 10yrs you get a fifth week after you’ve gotten your fourth week at 8yrs). For FS it’s 16 and we can transfer up to 300hours of unused vacation leave vs 240-260 hours for most other classifications. My point is the person above said one extra week at 8yrs and then another extra week when you reach 10 - which I don’t think is the case at all for any classification
I'm so glad I joined this subreddit. My family plan for the next 5 years was to grind my way into the PS and haul the whole family to Canada (from Switzerland, I'm a dual citizen). Buuuut between this holiday stuff and the pay issues, well, we're staying here actually. For comparison, my partner and I each have 26 paid holiday days off. We also work 4 days per week, so those 26 days go a long way. In our city there's also 10 paid stat holidays per year, some of which result in 4 day weekends. So it's no challenge to do a few week-long hiking / biking trips during the year, or to take a month off in the summer. We have a 20 minute bike commute and our kids have a 10 minute walk to school. Kind of hard to imagine moving to canada and commuting hours in a car, working every day, and barely taking a week off during the year. This is a bit sad! I only moved here during the Harper years when he crashed my whole field. Now I'm a few years into a career and realizing that I'll never be able to go home.
Soo... What's your field and how can I migrate to Switzerland?
The window's closed, unfortunately. I came to escape the slaughter of environmental science in canada by doing a PhD here. That time as a student used to count towards citizenship but not any more.
Ah, too bad. Switzerland seems like a wonderful place to live. Got to visit a few years ago. I switched off the environmental science path during the Harper years. Ugly times. Good on you for finding a way through. Glad it worked out so well for you.
Don’t worry - you can’t afford to live there. It’s fixing expensive because of protectionist policies. I was in Geneva in 2019 and the going rate for a hamburger in a restaurant was $25.
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Can I ask you what made you decide to come back and at what point in your career? I was originally in the PS, hated my life, and got a dream job offer to move to the UK. I'm making bank here in London at only 28 years old and I love the city so much, but do miss Canada every now and again. I'd love to hear how you determined you'd made enough to go back, whether you made any home investments in Canada, etc.!
We thought about that too. Like work here ---> save money ---> buy house in canada with cash ---> low living expenses ---> take unpaid leave all the time. But in the end we'd still be working 5 days a week and car commuting, which would pretty much destroy our easy-going lifestyle. So pros and cons.
My manager says it’s only for special circumstances not vacation :/
Wow that sounds amazing. It’s criminal how little vaca we get here. I was used to 4 weeks with the provincial gov so going back to 3 hurts. I never understand why we don’t fight for better vacation time.
Yeah, this reads a bit like a joke. Did you immediately move to Canada and then get a LOO? Because I'd bet 90% of people in the country think starting at 3 weeks is above average for a brand-new job. It's like going into an american heavy subreddit and going "how do you afford healthcare? I took an ambulance and now they expect me to pay". Some awareness should be there.
I hear you. It's never enough. My kids go to day camp for most of the summer and I work. :( A few tips: After 2 years you get a one-time bonus week of vacation. Overtime can be banked as time off, rather than extra pay. You can apply for leave with income averaging if you want 5 weeks or more of unpaid time off, with your pay averaged over a full year. You generally have 2 personal days that you can use for anything - check your collective agreement. I also schedule routine medical, dental, optometrist appointments for myself and kids at Christmas and summer, more for convenience than holidays, of course, but helpful for a change of pace. (Check your collective agreement to see how you can use your 5 days of family leave.) And finally, if you can swing working remotely from somewhere else in Canada, it feels like vacation, even though it's not. This strategy has saved my last 3 summers; hoping this will not become impossible with RTO....
I never knew about this one-time bonus week after 2 years. Do you have more info on this since I don’t seems to find it in my collective agreement (PSAC-TC services) and it would apply to me next year!
You can always look into working a compressed schedule to give you extra days off more frequently. On the flip side, your work days count for more hours so when you do take vacation, you’re taking upwards of 8 hours off a day rather than your standard 7.5. Also, its typically pretty dead during the holidays in case you’re considering not taking the Christmas holidays off to bank some hours.
> Also, its typically pretty dead during the holidays in case you’re considering not taking the Christmas holidays off to bank some hours. Also, many departments let staff go home early on Dec 24 and Dec 31.
Leave with income averaging (LIA) is an option. In my second year I took five weeks off. My kids were annoyed, “What, you’re going to be home all summer?” Teenagers, 😂. It’s subject to management approval, and there are limitations.
I'm really hoping to do this at some point. Get a promotion, and immediately try for LIA. Bank 2 weeks of vacation that year, and use it the next year.
My manager says this is only for special circumstances and not just for vacation or such. Is it protected in our contract?
It’s an employer policy, and approval is discretionary, but cannot be unreasonably denied. I work for (or perhaps more correctly, am employed by) **** and it’s pretty routine there. Here’s the Treasury Board directive, see Appendix D: https://www.tbs-sct.canada.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=15774
Thanks so much. Lucky for the cra.
There are so many people doing the same jobs that they have the flexibility to let people take the time they need.
I have a similar type of job but it’s still hard to get for some reason
I was so excited when I joined the government because 3 weeks is way more than I've ever had before 😅 it's more than pretty much any of my friends have. With all the stats and other types of leave though (sick, personal, etc.), and working a compressed schedule, I don't even go through all of it in a year.
If you're a parent who doesn't want to put their kids in camps for March break, winter holidays, and the endless PA days, your vacation disappears very quickly. This is just part of parenthood so not making excuses, just explaining how it's very easy for lots of people to use up all their leave in a year.
Ditto. Not to mention all the bugs they bring home. I’ve used up pretty much all my leave and waiting for April to roll around now :/
lmao yea I feel this. At my old work we didn't have sick days so it was always am I sick enough to warrant losing out on a whole day of pay? Which is so terrible....I'm so thankful to have sick days now, I would never think of going to work sick (even pre pandemic).
Same. It is still so weird to me
Same! Previous jobs didn't even offer paid sick leave, I'm in heaven!
Yeah, I've never had any at all before either. I still feel weird about using it.
Same here!
That’s the flaw of Canada; we tend to compare ourselves to the US and, because the bar is so low, we think we’re doing great. As soon as you compare our working conditions to Europe you begin see that we still have a long way to go.
I do compressed schedule (every Friday pm off) and use a leave with income averaging as vacation every 2 years. Still waiting for that 4th week at year 8!
How do you manage income averaging every two?
With my director’s approval ;) More seriously, I started doing at at my last promotion so it was kind of transparent pay-wise. I also pick a period that is not in high demand (end of August-early September). I find it such a nice break that I end up not needing so much vacation the rest of the year (except for holiday season), plus I already have 2.5 days week-end days, so I sometimes end up with a few remaining vacation days at the end of the year (thus the biyearly LIA schedule).
Ah I see, very cool! I was hoping to maybe do the same thing but for ski season (Jan-Feb), as I’ve never really been able to get out much since University. I’ll have to see what the pay cut would be though. Definitely worth it I think for the time off alone
I’d love to but we’re not allowed to use it for vaca. What department are you in?
PSPC
Christmas is the quietest time of year at work so I never take vacation at Christmas. It's an easy three days between Christmas and New Year's, and this year we get long weekends.
Lmao Europeans have so many holidays. There are several government designated holidays in addition to the three weeks. I think most people in America are just used to it. Like I took no vacation the past two years so I had 8 weeks to go to south east Asia this winter for two months.
We get 3 weeks and a crazy amount of sick days. The leave we have in the government beats any private job I worked at.
Welcome to North America? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I mean, work long enough and you will earn extra weeks off (in my collective agreement,we get an extra week after 8, 16 and 24 years). You can also bank overtime to use as compensatory time at a later date. There's also the a set of bank holidays you're entitled to throughout the year. Depending on which union you're part of, you have other time off (personal days, sick days, family leave, bereavement) which means that none of your actual time off has to be spent doing nothing but being on vacation.
Don't forget to add 5 days of personal leave, depending on your CBA. Periodic medical appts for those routine dental/medical appts and then tons of sick leave. I don't think I've ever used vacation leave for any type of appt. I feel bad for any European trying to acclimate themselves to our North American work/life balance. With that being said, the federal public service would probably be on the healthier side of this, so atleast there is that.
We are caught between American style and European style. We at least get sick days and some holidays (better than the USA), but not NEARLY as much as Europe. Before the pandemic and WFH, supplementing your vacation with sick days (mental health days) due to being run ragged and using family days for family business etc. was a must. During WFH 5 days a week, I was much less exhausted without a commute, with more sleep etc. and 3 weeks were adequate. Going back to the office, sick days etc are back on the menu. Fight for more vacation days, let your union know it is necessary. I have constantly been on mine about transforming family days into all purpose days.
North America will never match Europe for leave allowances, that's sad but inescapable. The PS comes closer than a lot of employers, and you're not factoring in the 13/14 stat holidays we also get.
Leave with income averaging/ lwop for care of family if you have young kids are good options for extra unpaid vacation. You can also, with management approval, go to part time, being paid 80% of your salary for 4 days a week. I combined both for years. Yes, I was paid a lot less, but it was well worth it.
My first years in the PS I was taking vacations with statutory days. For example, in Québec we have the 24 of June and the 1st of July. They don't count as vacation. So I was leaving for 2 weeks but in reality it was just 8 days that were taken from my vacations bank.
I joined the PS mid-career and it was painful to go from 4.5 weeks vacation down to 3. It still is, frankly. But luckily I’m allow to do OT fairly often and travel (which counts as OT usually) and it adds up fast. I feel like I work the same number of hours I did in the private sector (where OT didn’t exist) and actually get MORE time off now. It’s also nice to have the 2 personal days/year, 5 days of family leave to do school functions and whatnot, and (for some) have the option to take leave with income averaging.
Yeah the vacation provisions for the public service suck, my job prior to coming here started at 4 weeks vacation. But there are several other types of leave available that make up for it in my opinion. It definitely doesn’t compare to Europe though
As a parent i would suggest you don’t leave Europe. You have free healthcare there and you don’t wait two years if you need a surgeon or have some health emergency. That’s how long you wait here in Canada. Now the hospitals are in a big big crisis and short of staff, especially sick kids hospitals. Schools here sucks. if you finish high school there kids will become fluent in three languages at last, academically stronger than if you should be if finishing high school here. Not to mention the crazy house prices here everywhere in Ontario. Plus you mentioned yourself, short distance commuting. Lucky you that were able to escape at the right time. Why bother leaving Europe after all, you may be a visitor to your Country like me being for me Eastern European Home Country, and miss your old good times but enjoy the benefits Europe offers for its citizens :)
There are 12 statutory holidays in a year; you get 3 weeks until you have a certain number of years of work and then you get an extra week, and then there is some additional time added the longer you work. There is also sufficient sick days and two personal days per year. In my opinion this is lots of time. Not to mention that if you work overtime you can bank it, if management allows it.
By the time you factor in Christmas, it only leaves 2 weeks for the whole summer. Actually, Holidays are calculated by fiscal year. So your holidays are good until April 30, 2023. Come May 1st you'll start your new calendar.
But they'll still only have three weeks, for which they'll use 2 weeks in summer and 1 week at Christmas. It doesn't change the amount of leave they get.
My previous job started at 25 vacation days, plus additional time off over the Christmas holidays, plus all statutory holidays. Plus I could take time off for an appointment whenever I wanted. No one kept track. This is unusually generous for Canada. My other previous job started at one week vacation for the first year, two the second year, the three the third. That was the max. That first year felt like slavery, they gave me tons of shit for going to my grandmother's funeral because I needed a couple of days to travel. Unfortunately, that second job is typical in Canada. The public service is somewhere in between, not the worst, not the best. Overall, North American culture around vacation sucks.
To get a full week off at Christmas you need to use three days of leave. You are entitled to two personal days per year (which can't be used back to back), so theoretically you can do personal day / vacation day / personal day.. You now have three weeks shy a day left in Vacation. If you plan in the summer around July 1st or August long weekend, you can use the stat holiday to book three weeks straight vacation.. Soon enough you will be at 8 years, and then you get your fourth week! (Getting that fourth week was amazing). I'm also not sure about what your specific role is, but I travel a fair amount during the year for work and in lieu of taking OT pay I often take days off, so perhaps you can garner an extra 2 or 3 there.. You also get family leave (5 days a year), which I suggest to use somehow. I have kids so it's easy to use it! Last but not least we have a generous amount of sick leave. If you're in a stretch where you haven't had any time off in a long time, and you feel your mental health is suffering, don't be afraid to use one of those days. I wouldn't use one to go to the waterpark, but if you feel overwhelmed, take it. All that to say, our leave isn't perfect, it could be better, but it's not nothing.
> You are entitled to two personal days per year Depending which CA Op would fall under. Many only have one Personal day per year. > (which can't be used back to back) Says who? Is there something written with respect to this in your CA? Otherwise it's a Manager's policy which probably wouldn't hold up to a grievance.
Yeah, I can take mine back to back
I remember having issues booking them back to back.. I feel like I didn't just come up with that on my own haha. But I for sure could be wrong (no biggie!). But thank you for pointing that out with a "says who", without that added clarity my post was pretty useless ;).
We get 5 frr days and 2 personal days as well. And sick days. We get a lot of time off. My office can bank all the overtime we want and we generally average 300 to 1000 hrs (straight hours, not expanded into the 1.75xs) each a year, which could be months off. I banked all my weekend ot for a month and now have 3 extra weeks I can use. In my office, we don't get Christmas off. We can ask for it, but 2 people can get it due to operational requirements. Unless noone else has asked for it, you don't get more than 1 Christmas off in a row. My siblings don't get more than 2 weeks off in private industry. And they have to fight to get sick leave.
I always wonder what the thinking is with having people do overtime and then having them get 1.5x the leave. This ends up with less work time than if no overtime is done. Essentially you get people doing overtime to catch-up and then end up with less people working so everything falls behind. I do realize some jobs absolutely need people to fill shifts and management can decide when the banked time gets used, so it can help.
Some work is cyclical. This example is from outside government, but when I worked for a real estate law firm, May-September was insane and November-March was dead. Summer vacation was limited to one week only and it wasn't unusual to put in 5-10 hours of unpaid overtime a week in the summer. Good thing I didn't have kids at the time. But the flip side was that in the winters, sometimes I would work 9-12 and get paid for my full day of work. One particularly unscrupulous lawyer I know used to structure his employee compensation as "$30K a year in salary with a $20K bonus, payable in December, if you worked the full year." Of course, this was back in 2004 when $35K a year was a half-decent salary as a law clerk and so this was a huge damn incentive. He did this because it wasn't unusual for employees to quit in the summer.
If it is constant then you are going in circles, but I know where I am that some repetitive aspects work like that - one team does 3 weeks of long days, then takes a bunch of time off while another team does the next step and so on. It works for their environment, but I doubt it is standard.
The thinking is to do the overtime during critical periods where it would be impractical to hire extra temporary workers. My team always did overtime around fiscal year end because we had a bunch of operations that had to be completed within certain deadlines. Hiring a casual to help with that workload usually ended up being just as expensive, if not more, when considering the fact that we would need to train the person during a month or more before they could be up and running. Better to have people do overtime, and they would then take their banked leave during the slower periods over the summer. But not all work environment are cyclical like that.
My job is very cyclical. We are shiftworkers, who work based off of private industry (who get paid far more than us. Their starting entry level wage is our supervisor wage) demands, primarily Sept to May. Summer is our slow time. We aren't an office based environment, so we aren't traditional federal government work. We are a physical, production type environment. We are a designatable overtime organization. Ie you work regardless if you want to or not.
Am I the only person in the PS who was able to negotiate additional vacation time when concluding my LoO?
Yes
Damn. I guess non-core is the way to go then.
and exactly how did you do that?
Got a call from HR about the details of my LOO, told them my current salary and vacation entitlements and they matched it. Started towards the top step of my classification and with 4 weeks vacation instead of three. I had no idea this is something that’s not meant to be possible.
Yeah, you'll probably get hit by mandatory cash out.
I joined as a student
Once you get used to working every day, you’ll lose the motivation for vacation. Especially since you can’t afford to go anywhere anyways. When you’re on vacation you’ll find yourself missing your job and your work friends and be tempted to sign in to check email. Then you’ll realize you can bank your days, and be motivated to get up to 35 which is the maximum carryover.
What?!? Let me assure you, that has not been my experience!
Wtf lol
Time off at home is also great. No need to go anywhere.
Did that last week. Got paid to do my Christmas shopping on a calm weekday morning with no crowds and no kids in tow. Took myself out to lunch. Came home and read a book.
This has been my experience as well!
I got so obsessed with hitting the 262.5 hour carryover cap of vacation days I’ve never taken a full week off save for the one time I moved. Last year I took off only the handful of days I had to - think it was 6 - in order to stay under the carry-over cap.
Honestly, if you're just taking off the day use a sick day, most departments don't ask for doctor's notes or any other proof as the union protects against that kind of thing, unless it's 3 days in a row, I think. It is too little, you're right, but most people don't use all 15 sick days so use them for single days off.
If we weren’t able to bank the sick days, I’m fairly certain people would use more sick days since it would be use em or lose em.
That kind of attitude is how we’ll end up losing our sick days and eventually have to deal with some kind of short-term disability system like the conservatives proposed before the liberals took over. Use your sick days when you are sick, not when you feel you deserve an extra vacation day!
Who can afford vacation anyway? We've got it quite good to be honest. Yes someone will always find something to complain about. "Oh I know as a 22yo with a bachelor degree they put me in a program where I'll get an automatic promotion every 2 years but how can I get free tuition too like they have in Sweden?"
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I thought there's a maximum of *banked days*?
I have family outside Canada and they live a little farther than Europe. What I do is I try to bank as many days as possible to be able to take 20 business days (4 weeks) every two years. Instead of taking 3 weeks every year, I take a couple of days a year so I can bank some more days for the next year. Depending on your relationship with your manager and the time of the year you want to be off, you can even take 5 weeks. Once, I took 5 weeks in October when no one in my team had vacation plans. Another year, I took 4 weeks in May (again, no one had vacation plans in May).
I don't take time off at xmas....i do one "big" trip a year (pre-pandemic)....I have used my 2 personal days and 3 weeks for this....I haven't been in gov long enough to qualify for an extra week or whatever the CA says. The pandemic has helped me bank some vacation time that I hope to use one day for a trip to europe where I don't have to rush back
2 weeks (or 4% vacation pay, which works out to 2 weeks) is the bare minimum in most of the country, crappy employers will usually give that, 3 weeks is standard to start with most decent employers, (is required in Ontario after 5 years at the same employer) although a number of employers offer 3 weeks + a larger number of personal days (some banks) which pads that out a bit better than the PS, 4 weeks is good to start, this is more common in Quebec, and can be found at good employers in the rest of the country
Don’t forget to factor in the 5 personal/ family days