BuzzFeed employees demand it pay out earned PTO to all laid-off U.S. staffers
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right to work or not, is there any state where you have to "legally" give 2 weeks notice? i don't think there is.
IANAL, but there are enforceable terms in employment contracts occasionally. I agree they're rare from my understanding of how things usually wind up shaking out.
In 42 states, you can't fire someone for acting in a way that's compliant with public policy, like for saying "I won't ship these defective airplane parts".
36 states have an "implied contract" exception, meaning that if you've informally written or said that you won't quit or fire without good reason, then you can be bound by that as if it were a contract.
11 states have "good faith" exemptions, meaning you can't fire for mean or selfish reasons, like to avoid paying retirement benefits.
What you're describing is called "at-will employment" and it is totally unrelated to right-to-work (which has to do with unions and collective bargaining).
At-will employment is the default everywhere in the United States unless an exception is provided by law (Florida is one of a few states with no exceptions), or if the contract states otherwise. IE, At-will is the baseline, laws and contracts can add additional requirements.
So, in other words, what you did was not legal, and they totally could have come after you for breach of contract, they just decided not to.
The law says "unless you've explicitly agreed otherwise, you can end an employment relationship with no conditions". This person explicitly agreed otherwise, then reneged on their agreement, that's a breach of contract.
If the contract says "I will give two weeks notice before I leave" and you sign on the dotted line, then you need to give two weeks notice before you leave or else suffer the penalties described in the contract.
You can't cite laws to get out of contractual obligations unless the contract demands you do something illegal.
That is simply untrue. There are a number of reasons a contract can be deemed invalid or unenforceable. Illegality is only one such reason.
Employers cannot get out of legal requirements just by having employees sign contracts. Not all rights can be waived.
> If the contract says "I will give two weeks notice before I leave" and you sign on the dotted line, then you need to give two weeks notice before you leave or else suffer the penalties described in the contract.
Well, it would have to be a valid contract, and the penalties described in the contract would have to be legal (you can't put punitive damages in a contract). If, some time after you are hired, the employer asks you to sign a contract that says that you will give two weeks notice, and you sign on the dotted line, that's not actually a valid contract (because there's no consideration).
> You can't cite laws to get out of contractual obligations unless the contract demands you do something illegal.
In general you can breach any contract, there are many laws which give reasons why a contract would be void, or laws which prevent employers from entering into certain types of contracts, and reasons why a contract would not be enforced or possibly unenforceable.
So, yes, you can cite laws.
If both provisions were in the contract, then what you're stating would suggest that the company could not refuse to pay for the unused vacation time, either. But, again, that doesn't appear to be the case here.
For completeness's sake, there are 38 states with an "implied contract exception" to at-will employment, where statements in the employee handbook would count as implied contract and be binding, but Florida is not one of them.
The statements in an employee handbook can be binding on the employer, but never the employee. This is well-settled case law in the US. (Whether it is actually binding depends on the specific language used, so I edited my comment from "is" to "can be".)
This is so completely wrong that it's almost exactly the opposite of the truth. Two weeks notice is a courtesy except for term-defined employment contracts where the length of employment is an explicit, defined term of finite duration.
They told her that a recent change in policy would mean she would only be paid for a maximum of 30 of those days.
I told her that alone would be enough to make me sick to my stomach for about 125 days (pretty much an entire school year), after which I would be ready to retire.
Luckily she is at least aging gracefully and goes to the gym daily. She's been collecting that sweet defined benefit pension for 25 years and will probably get another 10 out of it at least.
I've personally had a year where I only took 8 days of vacation and I'm already regretting it a few months into the next year.
These days with pooled sick and vacation/personal, my personal experience suggests 20 or so days as a starting point for large-ish tech companies. I'm sure there are some/many that give less but I know what I've personally seen that wasn't considered extraordinarily generous.
These are separate from PTO. At the very minimum, I would expect 10 PTO days in addition to 8 sick days. You might lose some goodwill if you max out your sick day use, but you are owed those days by law regardless.
Single digit vacation days would be insane. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
I worked at a place where we got bought out and the new owners tried to give us 2 extra weeks of vacation a year. We all laughed. Because nobody was getting to take the 2 weeks they already had.
Personally, I like to let them accrue so I can take one very long holiday overseas every couple of years. I'm lucky to have a good immune system that leads to only missing maybe a single day a year due to sickness, allowing the others to be used for last-minute errands and mental health days.
Sick days are not holiday/vacation, and have additional restriction on use where they exist instead of combined PTO. But, in any cases there wasn't an accrual limit here, they just had a limit on cash out at separation.
I think you've got it backwards.
The issue is that too many companies in position of power too readily screw over their employees from whom they expect loyalty but give none.
Also, the fact that 125 days pretty much covers her entire working year as a teacher is rather astounding for people who work in the private sector. Most of us have to put in 220+ days each year to justify our salaries.
And that's a full year of "teaching", as in, with a classroom of kids. Teachers usually have a few weeks of training and work during the summer as well. But this is all offset by the fact that they are usually paid less than market wages, even when accounting for benefits. Although, defined benefit plans are becoming rare in both the private and public sector.
And, if you left for whatever reason, you were paid out your accrued PTO (which often had an accrual cap) but not sick time.
That said, I'm not a fan of the combined system. In a lot of other ways, we expect employers to accommodate employees who may have issues of various kinds. Accommodating employees who get sick more often seems a reasonable extension of that. (And I say that as someone who, touch wood, has largely benefited from a combined system over the past decade or so.)
Because the alternative to being in bed with the flu is being at work with the flu, and the employer doesn't want to catch the flu? It kinda makes utilitarian sense.
As I said, I'm not a fan of the combined vacation and sick time in any case (in part for the reason you say). And, yes, people will drag themselves into work because they don't want to lose a vacation day.
If you hoard your PTO in case you get sick, you don't get to enjoy vacations.
There's a middle ground, but the spot where you draw the line and say "I need to save this many days in case I get sick" is going to be different for everyone, and most people are not going to calculate it correctly.
Not to mention the employee isn't incentivized properly here. The employee that takes too much vacation and goes to work sick, they're not the one who pays the cost of them going to work sick, it's the other employees who do. So a combined PTO scheme like this actually incentivizes employees to err on the side of taking more of it as vacation than they should.
Additionally, Walmart in particular is no stranger to class-action suits brought from it's employees. Given how little Walmart pays the average employee and how profitable it is, this behavior would have a very little and well bounded guaranteed upside (saved money), but a large unknown possible downside (lawsuits, bad PR, etc). When profits are good, that risk reward ratio probably just doesn't look very worthwhile to most companies.
Right to work has to do with if you have to join a union or not if your workplace has one, most states are at will employment.
I also would like to add, that Buzzfeed did not simply throw these people out the door and into poverty, they did provide severance and benefits through April, which should be plenty of time to find another source of income (hopefully).
"BuzzFeed’s laid-off employees received a severance of a minimum 10 weeks pay, and benefits through April. Taylor’s response to the petition’s organizers said the company wants to meet with staff to discuss the issue"
Assuming benefits are actually written in a contract (and they aren't, not that I've seen anyways), if you're "at will" then they can terminate you for not signing a new employment contract with the new benefits when they feel like changing the benefits. Therefore, in practice, they have complete unilateral control over benefits.
But they aren't going to write your benefits in a binding contract, because that's just not standard practice and there's no upside for them to do so and just creates more paperwork.
When unions are involved, however, there's real contracts. However, unions are very uncommon in the US.
Of course, this means you're getting your PTO paid out while simultaneously being laid off, but I never said the situation was perfect, just that they can't arbitrarily ignore their own employment contract.
>But they aren't going to write your benefits in a binding contract, because that's just not standard practice
Every professional job I can remember absolutely did come with written policies about things like vacation and PTO, and this stuff was written right into the offer letter. The offer letter is absolutely legally binding. I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.
I happen to have a job acceptance letter sitting on my desk right now. Reading through it, as far as benefits it says that the position is eligible for benefits, gives the benefits in very, very generic terms "PTO, retirement, health, dental" and they are "subject to terms conditions and limitations outlined in the plan documents and policies." Well "plan documents and policies" are under complete control of the employer, so the translation is "we decide the benefits and dictate them to you."
Even if that was a real "contractually promised benefit package," as in an actual contract was signed, unless you have a union, the contract is only good until the employer feels like it. If they want to change the benefits they'd just draft up another contract that doesn't have any severance and they'll make all employees sign it. Don't want to sign it? Then you're fired. Since you're fired you don't get severance, because severance is for employees who are laid off, not those who are fired for disagreeing with changes in company policies.
In America absent a solid union contract (that's a REAL contract, not the form an employer gives you to sign) or laws specifying otherwise, benefits are at the sole discretion of the employer.
Anyone whose been at a company more than a few years has seen significant changes to benefits packages. I worked at a company that, when I had been there for years, sent a short email saying "We will no longer be matching 401(k) contributions." That was it, thousands of dollars in salary cut just like that, with a few keystrokes and ZERO dialog. I also worked at a different company who was acquired by a major multinational corporation. The new corporation make us all sign a "no side projects" agreement. Some people grumbled a bit about this but one person said she wasn't willing to sign it, so the new corporate overlords fired her.
This is not true. They are still required to honor the previous contract through its term. Forcing someone to sign a contract that essentially voids the previous one before its original term has expired, upon threat of termination, is literally a textbook case study in law school.
> In America absent a solid union contract (that's a REAL contract, not the form an employer gives you to sign) or laws specifying otherwise, benefits are at the sole discretion of the employer. Anyone whose been at a company more than a few years has seen significant changes to benefits packages. I worked at a company that, when I had been there for years, sent a short email saying "We will no longer be matching 401(k) contributions." That was it, thousands of dollars in salary cut just like that, with a few keystrokes and ZERO dialog. I also worked at a different company who was acquired by a major multinational corporation. The new corporation make us all sign a "no side projects" agreement. Some people grumbled a bit about this but one person said she wasn't willing to sign it, so the new corporate overlords fired her.
You're confusing two completely different things (contract vs. at will, and unionized vs. non-unionized) and ascribing power to unions that they don't have. A contract with a fixed term may prevent this situation, and that's something that can happen with or without a union. For entirely at-will employment, benefit changes can still happen with no notice (whether or not the labor force is unionized) and employees have the choice of continuing their employment or not. (The equivalent email to the one you received would read something like "The new contract agreed upon with the union no longer includes 401(k) contributions". At that point, employees still have two choices: accept the new terms or quit.
The only reason I came in at all is so that they'd transfer my clearance to my new employer. If they wanted me to write some bullshit resignation letter, they had best be prepared to deal with the consequences of me not having been laid off, which is to say the salary I hadn't been paid while "benched". But with the small numbers involved, they only needed a handful of people to say they actually resigned, or that they got laid off at a different time, so it wasn't really worth fighting.
And here I am, technically working for them again, after they got bought by a company with better cash flow. They certainly had an opportunity to read that letter in the old HR file before rehiring me.
You can't count on the labor laws to protect you. Keep a 6-month savings buffer, update your resume every year, and try to make sure that it would hurt a little, but not too much, if you suddenly disappeared without wrapping up loose ends. The company should be able to survive if you got hit by a bus (or otherwise separated on zero notice), but it should also have to cry a little. And ask for more money than you think you're worth, to account for the chance that they'll screw you over without any warning.
What they could do is have severance for all employees be N days, where N = 10 weeks - (avg # PTO days), and then also pay out PTO individually per employee. The company ends up paying out the same amount overall, but employees who had more PTO days stored up than average get paid out more and vice-versa for those with fewer. In that sense it is more fair, and this whole brouhaha started because the existing policy isn't perceived as being fair.
Edit: I assume of course that the proposed severance is at least as big as the PTO.
The former doesn't imply the latter; all (not almost all) US states have at-will employment, but that just means good cause is, by default (i.e., absent specific contract terms), not needed to sever an employment relationship; some states, and the federal government, nevertheless require notice or payment in lieu of notice and for some states additional post-layoff benefits (e.g., paying continued health benefits for a certain period) for certain large layoffs.
They may have been clumsy there. They could have avoided this bad PR by just paying the PTO and giving 5 weeks of severance or something like that.
It goes on the books as a liability, which is why a lot of companies are doing ‘unlimited vacation’ now. (And why others don’t want to roll vacation from one year to the next). If they don’t owe you a certain amount of vacation, they don’t have to pay it out when you quit.
But if they do owe it, they do have to pay you.
That should be true, I agree, however it is not. Here is a source outlining the laws in each state.
http://ask.legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.info/cc-nto-vacatio...
For example, in my state, the law is; Unused vacation will not be not considered wages unless an employment agreement, union contract, or company policy provides that vacation will be cashed out on termination of employment, in which case an employee may have a claim for vacation pay if the terms of the agreement, contract, or policy are not followed (Chrin v. Cambridge Hydrodynamics, Inc., 2003 WL 25754809 (N.J. App. Div. Dec. 30, 2003); see New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development: Wage and Hour Compliance FAQs).
I can't really complain about lack of vacations but I've also never been in a situation where I could really just take a sabbatical for a few months.
Are you under the impression that journalism is a hot job market?
10 weeks is not a lot of time to find a new professional job. I'm guessing it's not incredibly difficult to find a low-paying contract job going writing of some sort. But editor-level jobs in the writing field? Probably a lot harder--journalism or otherwise.
My company routinely runs coding classes and bootcamps to help people from marketing, advertising, accounting, payroll etc to transition to a software career. Mostly women attend. I don't know of one single person who was able to make the shift.
It's hard to do a 40 hour work week(Most have to put in more than that). Then learn something totally obtuse to what you've been doing all life. And most people get into non-STEM professions, because they don't like STEM much. You have to overcome biases, mental inertia and mental training worth decades, this is after your regular work. And there is an endless stack of books and reading resources to get to doing something decent. All the while you have a full time job, commute, family and other commitments. Most of them quit because they know they have to level down a mountain, and it still wont be worth it, because you will never catch up with the main stream ever.
You need to be motivated and need to work beyond belief to break through.
It's not that people are stupid. But it's really like equivalent of a life long couch potato waking up one day and wanting to run the Bad water ultramarathon. There is simply too much of a gap to make up.
These days swim lanes get set early in life.
Note there is another story on HN going on about a 64 year old man reading a semester worth books and still unable to land a job(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19022000).
Great commentary in the form of a quiz here:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jsweeten/do-you-still-have-a-job-at...
How this isn't law in a Developed Country is beyond me.
now i work in a office, doing this cyber security work. i would never stay past 5:30, i'd never forgo PTO, or force myself to over work myself beyond respectable limits.
“This is paid time that employees accrued by choosing not to take vacation days, and instead do their work at BuzzFeed,”
when i read things like this it just strengthens my feelings towards it.
is this the right attitude?
> is this the right attitude?
being professional and setting boundaries is absolutely the right attitude. it's just a job.
when you say, "month long trips" are those holidays or work related?
When I accrue time off, you as the employer and I as the employee have a written contract on what that time is for, when it can be used, and why it can be used. It places parameters on my time, yes, but it also is an actual agreement between the two of us, in objective terms.
Whereas unlimited PTO sounds nice, it also opens up more problems between myself and workplace 'culture'. It's so subjective and down to personal opinion as to whether or not I'm abusing the system.
It just tastes bad. I've worked in both environments, and I much rather prefer the structured environment. There seems to be far less drama and nonsense related to taking time off.
Unlimited PTO is one of those things that sounds great to potential employees who have never experienced it. Until you get in and realize you end up taking way less time off than if you just had 15 set days or whatever.
That's the idea behind it. It's a huge red flag for me.
But it looks fantastic on paper. The problem is you don't know how you'll be judged if you do take the time off. They'll never come and say "hey it looks like you took 5 weeks off this year". They'll just say "it looks like you're not realizing your full potential". So it allows for a lot more sinister manipulation and control.
It could even be coming from peers, managers, HR it doesn't matter. "Gee, so and so in on vacation... while we are slaving here at 8pm at night. - Haha. Of course he is, eye roll..." kind of stuff. And maybe the employee was having a family crisis and needed to spend time with their loved ones but it's not something they'll broadcast but people will imply various things and assume not the very best of intentions.
If the company is so darn generous, just give everyone 6 weeks off and make everyone take it.
Exactly. It can also be incredibly inequitable. My previous job had a rule about not “abusing” the policy, but no one ever defined what abuse looked like.
One of the final straws for me was hearing from someone from another department that they had taken 5 weeks off over the last 12 months whereas I worked over several holiday weekends and spent time away from family due to the pressure of “needing” to get something done.
But, IMO, any company with this policy needs to establish some guidelines and management from the top down needs to walk the walk to show that they really expect employees to take 4-6 weeks off (or whatever) and stay home if they're sick.
Otherwise, it's just about keeping liabilities off the books.
However this idea of "0 agreement" between employer and employee is starting to grow on me. Time after time and article after article we see employers screwing employees for various reasons, including incompetence. At this point it seems like finding a genuinely positive actor is as much a matter of luck as it is dedication. So I suppose it's time to change/
I no longer subscribe to workplace or employer loyalty. After working in the industry for ~8 years I can never see myself staying at a company for more than 4-5. I don't trust my manager, HR department, C-levels, policies, etc. Hell I tell people upfront in interviews that I'm a terrible employee but very good at my job.
Cycling back around to your points:
>Whereas unlimited PTO sounds nice, it also opens up more problems between myself and workplace 'culture'.
>...I much rather prefer the structured environment. There seems to be far less drama and nonsense related to taking time off.
I counter with: What workplace culture?
Edit: Formatting.
> Whereas unlimited PTO sounds nice, it also opens up more problems between myself and workplace 'culture'. It's so subjective and down to personal opinion as to whether or not I'm abusing the system.
TBH that sounds like the problem was that there wasn't a policy and they just said "unlimited PTO".
I loved having "unlimited" PTO. Our policy was, for all practical purposes, the same as any other PTO policy, except no accrual. I wasn't a manager, so I can only comment on my experience, but I took 5 weeks off in my first year and nobody said a word about it. I know a few people got "warnings" for taking a lot more than average, but it had to be a LOT, and it was still always approved. And then we got bought by a company with a terrible policy :(
A big problem I have with limited PTO is that it's a limited resource, so I hoard it because I don't want to "waste" it, and then I end up not taking much.
And I don't think I'm the only one. With the unlimited policy few people would work from their mechanic's shop, or the airport, or the doctor's office, or anything like that. Realistically they weren't going to be productive, so they'd just take the time off and not worry about it. They didn't work 4 weeks to earn that day off, so it wasn't a big deal.
They don't.
https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2017/05/24/permanent-vacation...
"For similar reasons, more employers are also experimenting with open or unlimited leave policies, which can offer the same benefit. The general idea of an open or unlimited vacation policy is that the employee doesn’t really accrue or earn a set amount of leave per pay period or year. Rather, leave is unlimited and may be subject to few, if any, restrictions beyond supervisor approval and a reasonable assurance that assigned duties, projects, clients, and other workload-related details are managed during the worker’s absence.
Here, because employees are not accruing a set number of wage-equivalent hours per pay period, no compensation interest vests. After all, you can’t very well pay out “unlimited” vacation at termination."
I read that as if you are in a role with no backup or reasonable cover for your duties you can never take vacation. As I often find myself in that position I'd shy away from "unlimited vacation" roles.
I've never seen a company the doesn't track time off regardless of their policy.
In some HR systems you’re basically lazy-provisioned PTO time as it’s taken, so your amount of accrued PTO Time is always reconciled at the same amount of PTO time taken, leaving the available balance at zero.
In other systems, you technically have zero days of PTO available, and when you use it your balance goes negative. Which gets zeroed out at the end of the year.
In both cases, your PTO balance is never greater than zero, so you never have any unused days that would be subject to pay out.
Oh no, somebody setting boundaries and not working weekends? Unacceptable!
It's certainly possible there were other issues, but to me this sounds like sour grapes for not having the courage to pull off such a genius move yourself.
Assuming that's correct, what are you complaining about here? That the guy was time-shifting his weekends, or that he was actually making use of the policy?
In either case, why is it an issue?
The unavailable thing came down to being reachable in case of a support issue... I have no gripes about it what so ever.
No idea if he was otherwise a good co-worker but neither of those facts by themselves raise a flag for me.
So don't expect any decisions or statements made by companies offering "unlimited PTO" to be fair - or many any kind of sense, otherwise.
If I'm negotiating comp with such a company, I would add what would normally be the PTO I would receive at a place which has it as a defined benefit and use that number as what I would need to be offered in order to accept a position there.
In the last century I worked for CBS. At the time, CBS had a policy where vacation rolled over from year to year. It was common for people to save up for a few years in order to take off for an entire month or two.
When Westinghouse bought CBS, a memo went out that the policy changed to use-it-or-lose it. The memo went out around October, so for the next two months there was a massive crush of people trying to use their accrued vacation before the end of the year.
On the plus side, a lot of the young employees and interns had to cover for the veterans, and in doing so got a lot of front-line experience they never would have anywhere else.
Then when the vets came back from vacation and quit because they were pissed they'd lost so much banked vacation time, those new employees and interns all moved up in the ranks and ended up running the joint.
(A broad generalization company-wide, but certainly a noticeable shift in the unit where I worked.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave...
And of course, if you do take PTO that you haven't accrued yet for the year, and then leave, companies will claw it back, that's legal and "fair" but paying it out if you don't take it and have some left somehow never managed to becomes a law.
It's also disappointing that this comes from BuzzFeed. One would expect this from some fast food restaurant chain and BuzzFeed would be at the forefront, doing a lot more for its employees.
My thoughts are this should be treated like 401K contributions where the company HAS to set aside the full amount of money even if the employee isn't fully vested (they get it back if they leave before fully vesting). Also, in my mind, this is easily solvable with just continuing to pay the employee for the duration of their PTO when they leave. That way it's not an increase, it's just the status quo. It would be the same as taking all your vacation then coming back and putting in your 2 weeks (or just leaving).
Would love to know any arguments you all have or have made regarding this situation.
Should you also not get a paycheck for your last two weeks of work if you leave, while on a PIP?
IMHO regular employees should be treated as creditors of first priority for unpaid wages/salary, PTO and any IRA/401k benefits. This should probably include COBRA health insurance for some period of time (this may already be covered?).
This means paying regular employees should come ahead of repaying investors, banks, bondholders, etc. And this should be mandated by law.
Likewise unused PTO should be paid out for all employees who leave a job.
Sure, if there's no recovery value in a bankruptcy, employees aren't going to get paid back wages but no one else is getting paid either.
Because the people who own companies have a lot more power and influence than the people that work for them, and the politicians write laws that reflect this.
I have seen corporate officers pursued successfully for unpaid PTO after corporate insolvency in Illinois.
Side note: This is why “unlimited vacation” is a bit quirky as a benefit. Ask what the minimum is, because that’s what is going to be paid out when you seperate.
How is that not “use it or lose it”?
In my view that puts the incentives in the right places, firms that are unwilling to abide by those clear rules are likely trying to game the PTO system anyway and are committing a variety of fraud when they hire someone under those false terms.
Illegal in California: You earn 2 vacation days per month, and they are "use it or lose it." Hired in January, by December you have 24 days banked and never use them. The next January, your existing PTO balance is set to 0 and you are not compensated for the unused days. Balance at end of January: 2 days banked.
The legal distinction is that your employer can decide not to give you PTO for any arbitrary reason (there is no legal requirement to give any at all), but they cannot take back PTO that has already been paid out.
I've never heard of anywhere doing this sort of yearly zero-reset anyway. Wouldn't this make it literally impossible to use the vacation earned during the last pay period of the year?
Typically the yearly reset is for awarded (as opposed to earned) PTO. e.g. On Jan 1 you reset, but back to 15 days, and you have the rest of the year to use it. I'm guessing this is also legal in California because PTO is not earned in this model.
It's not uncommon for companies to have some variant of this.
I agree that it's not all that different from accrual caps in practice but does need a little more management to avoid losing time.
ADDED: Accrual caps are also typically more along the lines of vacation earned over 18-24 months in my experience.
I guess they've missed the big picture that the company is bleeding money so fast that they had to lay off 15% of their workforce.
Some companies I worked at did regular "shutdowns" to get PTO off the books as it showed as a sort of expense they would have to pay.
Maybe BuzzFeed was playing some weird word games and it wasn't PTO... but was?
This is clearly a business trying to extend their runway ever so slightly at the expense of the employee.
When you're working 6-7 days a week at 80 hours+ there's really not room for any vacation.
I'm with you; I don't let that much PTO accrue, as I need time off.
This is why I prefer actual accrued PTO policies. I should not even have to consider whether or not my supervisor cares that I take a day off. It should just be agreed upon that I am able to take x time under x circumstances on day 1 of my employment. Worrying whether or not my supervisor is cool with is just tastes too much like relying on the largess of some benevolent overlord.
I know that the news division needs dedicated journalists, but the main site is basically rehashing existing content. Surely you don't need 2,000 employees for that.
Additionally, the layoffs are not done yet. :(
> I can’t really have this discussion in public, can’t share all relevant information on twitter, but I look forward to being very open-minded and transparent with the staff council in our upcoming meeting
Seems... dishonest. What precisely prevents him from having it in public besides his desire not to?
I don’t see that as dishonest (really, how is it?), I see that as being cautious.
They'd probably save a lot more if they had paid for PTO and only PTO.
And now I read that in 45 US states, companies don't have to pay what they owe you in vacation time, when you get laid off.
Bob gets 2.5 months of salary. Alice also gets 2.5 months of salary. But Alice hasn't taken any time off for the past year, while Bob went on vacation and depleted his PTO budget. Alice is a sucker, Bob is a hustler. Fuck Alice, right?
Employees outside of California who want the benefits of California law should lobby their State government to adopt similar rules.
PTO that is earned over time, as part of your pay period, is a form of compensation to be expected.
In practice this just means that you can take two weeks and still get paid. You can forgo your vacation in some instances, but you still get paid out the vacation money. I used to do that when I worked part-time in college and was short of cash for whatever reason.
Ontario's rules - https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standa...
That screwed me when I changed jobs last year actually and I lost 3 days of pay that I didn't take.
This is always disclosed up front. In this case, did the company claim they were going to pay out and then they didn't? Or did the company never claim they would, but the ex-employees are "demanding" it anyway?