Paid Time Off

[CdnCarrie]

Digging through this page is great; I also loved seeing the nine general holidays where you either don’t work or are paid extra for working. Does Manitoba stand out in this area, or are other provinces similar?

I live somewhere considered progressive in employee rights, but we still work all holidays with no additional pay.

Fairly standard across Canada. Mandatory 3rd week of vacation varies by length of employment among provinces,

 

[CdnCarrie]

1) If you get vacation, it can't be taken away. You have to be allowed to use it or be paid for it.

3) Employees HAVE to get an unpaid meal break. And that meal break HAS to happen no sooner than 3 hours after the start of your shift, and no later than 5 hours after. No tacking onto the beginning or end of your shift. If you do not get your meal break in that time, they have to pay you a penalty equal to one hour's pay, plus overtime pay for the length of your meal break. I have to admit I hated that, because I worked 8 straight without a meal break for the first 30 years of my working lift by choice. The law prohibits an employee from waiving a meal break

Everyone in Canada by law gets vacation and unpaid meal time. It’s labour law and really a basic human right sort of thing .
Weird you think this exceptional. It’s a basic labour law up here.

So sad there are workers in a country like the USA where this is not standard practice.

 

[tvguy]

Everyone in Canada by law gets vacation and unpaid meal time. It’s labour law and really a basic human right sort of thing .
Weird you think this exceptional. It’s a basic labour law up here.

So sad there are workers in a country like the USA where this is not standard practice.

Well, just remember not every worker wants those benefits. Twice in my 42 year post college I worked jobs with no benefits. First year out of college for about a year I was part time, which meant no benefits of any kind. It is a job that the owner would not have authorized if he had to pay for benefits. And 20 years ago I lost my job and got hired on "Freelance" for about a year. I did not need health care as we had that through my wife's employer, and was willing to go without vacation and sick time because I had one child in a private University and one in a private High School and I needed income. I was not guaranteed any work, but the reality was over 13 months I never got less than 40 hours a week and was always the first offered overtime. And every three months I would get called in and warned that they had no more money in the budget to keep me on after the next two weeks, only to look at the schedule a week later and see I had 40 hours.
That really is ancient history, but the whole freelance or independent contractor labor issue regarding benefits has been huge in California in recent years with Uber and Lyft drivers. I don't know how big a percentage of people don't want benefits, but there are some that need/want the flexibility of working when they want, and not working when they don't want to work, and are willing to forgo benefits to get that work experience.

 

[atthebeachclub]

I’ve personally always wanted benefits and worker protections, and they’ve proven hugely beneficial to me when needed.

There are US states I would never personally move to due to lack of workers rights (among many other differences). Think of the US as a patchwork quilt made of little countries masquerading as one big blanket of a country. There are big differences state to state, and few federally mandated requirements regarding things like PTO.

Contrasting with Canadian law is always interesting; while many similarities exist there are also many differences too.

 

[ronandannette]

I don’t work for the public service exactly.
More like a crown corporation.
We can carry over 10 days.
Our sick time is separate - not paid out and tied to short term disability.

We don’t have PTO or flex time.
Only vacation and sick time.
I’ve been there 25 years and at maximum vacation time.

The reason I was most curious about the terms is that my company is head-officed in Winnipeg, so although everything is compliant to regional requirements (we're in 4 provinces and 2 US states), it's based on Manitoba standards. 6 weeks at 25 years is exactly what we get too (I'm currently at 20 years/5 weeks). Your sick time arrangement sounds very similar to ours.

 

[CdnCarrie]

The reason I was most curious about the terms is that my company is head-officed in Winnipeg, so although everything is compliant to regional requirements (we're in 4 provinces and 2 US states), it's based on Manitoba standards. 6 weeks at 25 years is exactly what we get too (I'm currently at 20 years/5 weeks). Your sick time arrangement sounds very similar to ours.

We get 6 weeks at 20 years. Also we close over the holidays for a few extra paid days that are not vacation just a benefit.

 

[jalapeno_pretzel]

I've had unlimited time off for a few years and use about 25 days, which is right about what I had when we had a set number of days.

It's been years since I had something that would carry days over. It was always nice to get up to 200 hours (the max balance we were allowed), and then I'd have to take a day off every pay period to not lose it.