what did all of these people do, that they could take off the summer?

Yes really. I live in Australia.

I should actually have told you how it really works, but I just assumed it was the same everywhere.

In actual fact, you don't even have to be a full time employee, part timers accrue annual leave too. It's usually just casual employees who don't get holiday or sick pay, but they are paid a higher hourly rate.

The way it works is, you start accruing leave the day you start work and say you work 38-40 hours a week, you will have earned 152-160 hours of annual leave in a year. This is a very basic example, but hopefully it makes sense.
It basically works out to 1 week every 3 months. Also, some employers will make you wait the whole year before you can take leave, but others will allow you to take it as soon as you have it.

Sometimes, people don't take their leave for years and it really adds up, but now a lot of companies will force you to take it if you have to much owing, as it presents as a debt against the company.
To alleviate this, some companies will even let you cash in your leave. My cousin did that when her son needed braces, they couldn't really afford them just out of nowhere, so she got paid out her leave entitlements that she'd accrued and didn't take any time off that year.

Also, any owing annual leave must be paid out to you when exiting the company, so most people (if they can) will always keep themselves a couple of weeks stashed away, as a buffer for when they change jobs, at least I always do.

If you think I'm yanking your chain, here is a link.
http://www.fairwork.gov.au/Leave/annual-leave

We also get 10 paid sick days a year and there is a lovely little thing called RDOs (rostered days off). They are pretty rare now days, but some places still have them, especially if it is a highly Unionised industry, that's why mostly only tradies get them now.


But now I'm really interested, how does it work in the US???






What did people do before IMDB???

Probably responding to a troll, but oh well.

If you think that the idea of annual leave entitlement is socialism (and thus terrible, apparently), then tell me honestly that you have never taken any. People in the US are entitled to annual leave also, just not as much as some parts of the world.

And of course workers are 'entitled' to take leave from work. Most people recognise that workers are not owned by their employers, and they have the right to take time off from work during the year to spend time with family, or travel or whatever. My understanding is that generous leave entitlements have been pretty well correlated with more productive workers.

Part of the appeal of having a permanent job is the accrual of benefits such as sick leave and annual leave. Where the hell are you working that this concept is so foreign and repugnant? Or is it more the fact that it is a legal requirement for employers that is getting your goat? Never underestimate the ability for employers to exploit people desperate for employment. Without government intervention on behalf of workers, the already disadvantaged poor would be working under even worse conditions. Fancy a job in a factory in one of the poorer countries of Asia? No nasty socialist government-legislated leave benefits there.

Most industrialised countries have statutory minimum employment leave. I don't know how it works in the US but in Poland we have 20 working days per year during the first 10 years of employment and 26 working days afterwards, if you work only from Monday to Friday that's 4-5 weeks. Besides that you have national holidays which are legally non-working days, if they occur on a Saturday or Sunday we get an additional day off at work.