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Comment by MereInterest | Hacker News Reader

I'm fine with that, so long as there is also a reasonable amount of vacation time. The US really needs to get with the times and have basic workers' rights. Currently, the average number of vacation days per year in the US (17 days), is less than the statutory minimum number of days in many countries.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/15/statista-how-far-behind-us-i...

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Wait until you find out how many days per year the US mandates for parental leave.

I'll save you the suspense. The number is zero.

I'm less inclined to listen when people argue eroding or reducing workers rights when they are from the US.

It seems the general consensus there is regulation = evil and bad. Anyone who advocates such must be a communist.

Not at all suggest your comment is doing this.

What other countries do you hold prejudice stereotypes against, out of curiosity?

Besides United States, Papua New Guinea and Suriname also do not require employers to provide paid time off for new parents. So US isn´t the only country in the world that doesn´t have paid parental leave. Its one of the three countries in the world.

Federal law in the US mandates 12 workweeks of unpaid leave to care for yourself or someone else if your employer has 50+ employees:

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla/faq

However, it doesn’t separate for yourself and someone else, so technically a mother could be on bed rest for 3 months and exhaust all of her leave.

A small number of states do mandate paid family leave (specifically to care for someone else which includes new parents), but they also usually stipulate minimum number of employees at businesses.

It definitely doesn’t behoove a young person interested in becoming a parent at some point to work at a startup or small business unless they explicitly offer paid parental leave as a benefit.

Part of the reason my wife and I moved to the state we did was so that she can get an extra two months of leave with her newborn, and so our daughter would be growing up in state that offered them at least that much in the future.

In EU parental leave is paid, not in full, but you don't lose all your income while taking care of yourself and new taxpayer.

After taking a look at some other companies, I realized it’s pretty cushy having 26 days of PTO per year at a US company. When recruiters come knocking I point out that I don’t want to lose PTO days, and won’t consider positions where I’d have a reduction. Most of them don’t message me back.

Part time employees pretty much don't get any vacation, so I doubt that is the real average (the article says 15, which still probably isn't the real average). BLS says ~16 for full time, so there you go: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm

That's also a hell of a 'so long as'. If you ban lumped PTO and don't establish a robust minimum, lots of people aren't going to get what they would prefer.

So looking at UK labor law, do bank holidays count?

"An employer can choose to include bank holidays as part of a worker’s statutory annual leave."

https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

Because if so, they don't count in the US. So the US would be 17 days of vacation plus statutory holidays. At my job I get 25 days off, plus 13 statutory holidays, so 38 days a year off, paid.

US doesn't have any statutory work holidays. States don't either.

I believe they both define holidays, but it's for those directly employed, not workers in general.

By law, they don't count. The 28 days might be 20 days of your choice, plus the 8 bank holidays.

Most professional jobs give 28+8 (or more, I had 30+8 which slowly increased to 33+8).

Most everyone in the US that does not work in an office setting do not get paid for government holidays that they do not work. For example, at stores, restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters, hotels, etc.

And there is no legal requirement to pay anyone for any government holiday that they do not work either. Many times, the people that do work on government holidays also do not get paid any extra for working on a holiday.

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