[Heybuck]

In the thread "GM plants closures", reply 69 had these words in part of a response:

You are not entitled to PAID vacation.

I'm not asking this question to raise any political point, it's simply a statement which to me, an Australian, is difficult to comprehend. Is this true? That Americans do not have any entitlement to paid vacation?

Australian law dictates that any full-time employee is entitled to four weeks fully paid vacation annually. If you do not take the four weeks, the unused portion is accrued and added to any outstanding vacation.

On top of this, every full time employee is entitled to fully paid long service leave after 10 or 15 years continual service. In my own case, the girl who works for me has accrued 21 years continual service and her long service leave is now about 18 fully paid weeks plus her accrued annual holidays are about 13 fully paid weeks. So if she resigned tomorrow, I would have to find a fair lump of money to pay her out. (We already have it set aside).

Hopefully this thread does not find its way into the Clubhouse. My question is as to what are the usual entitlements for a paid employee in the US?

Ian