Isn’t it mandatory to pay holiday accrued? Because it’s been, well, accrued…
In California, accrued vacation is part of wages and must be paid out as part of wages. However, unlimited PTO policies typically don't accrue vacation.
In Washington, it's "read your contract." If your contract doesn't say that they pay out accrued PTO upon separation, they don't.
The smart businesses would just actually bank the dollar amounts and not worry about it, but those are rare.
At the moment the precedents are still heavily employee biased, but you ask for whatever you want in your contract during negotiations. Negotiate your sick pay, negotiate your PTO, negotiate your vesting schedules and exit terms, negotiate your hours and time in lieu policies. Negotiate your Intellectual Property terms. That one is super common to see lopsided toward the employer. We don't have unions or award rates, so we also miss out on some of those protections, hence why we need to make sure it's in the contract.
Even the nicest, fairest business owners I've worked for will start with industry standard contracts that do their best to shaft you, because it's industry standard and they don't see it as lopsided. But I've never had trouble negotiating for this stuff to be made clearer and fairer.
Generally, employees in America do not have contracts. While plenty of things are open for negotiation during the offer/hiring process, I doubt you'll get an exception to a corporate policy on paying out on PTO if it's not something they already do.
That said, IME, accrued PTO has always been paid on departure (voluntary or not). For this reason, most of the places I've worked heavily encourage (or even require) taking PTO, because it's a liability on their books.
Is that true? The company surely has terms for you, like expected working hours, terms about your sick leave, performance and health terms, out of office expectations, intellectual property disclosures and NDAs? Non-compete clauses? When does all that become binding if not through a contract?
I've never seen this in the US. The only things typically up for negotiation is the sign on bonus/equity and base pay. If you start trying to negotiate vacations and holidays, you're going to look pretty silly.
> The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations, sick leave or federal or other holidays. These benefits are matters of agreement between an employer and an employee (or the employee's representative).
Everything is negotiable. That said, the bigger the company, the harder it can be.
F500 company and you want a line out of your mid-level developer contract? Their legal likely doesn't have time and they will just hire someone else.
Startup? Literally write your own contract.
Everything is up for negotiation. Just depends whether or not you have options. I have seen PTO negotiated in the US.