Mandatory Vacation

[groundloop]

I just finished watching another great Formula 1 race, and had a thought about the differences between the USA and much of the rest of the world. Formula 1 enforces a MANDATORY VACATION on all the race teams, all the race shops are to be shut down and no employees are allowed to work for two weeks starting tomorrtow. It just goes to show the different ways that various cultures view the worth of people. MANDATORY VACATION - how unAmerican !!!

[KittyWampus]

1. Financial Houses require a long vacation to see if there are any aberrations while you're gone.

And I"m going to be sarcastic by saying that's typically American too.

[Princess Turandot]

6. I was a CPA in a past life...

I can think of at least two instances in audit clients that I was tangentially involved with where frauds were uncovered because the employee who was stealing money was away on vacation. Both clients were well-respected, generally well-run non-profits. One of the cases involved the theft of about $400,000. The other was more than $2 million (over a few years), although that occurred at a very large organization.

In both cases, the thief had control of nearly all of the financial duties in a specific function, which is a major faux pas. (If you can access the money, you should not be the person who has responsibility for its accounting records.) They were discovered in each case because someone needed information about the function in question while the thief was away, and someone else in the department tried to help them get it.

In terms of traditional internal controls everywhere, when you have an employee who never takes vacation at all, not even to have a long weekend, that can be an indication that something is going on. That's not the same, of course, as demanding people go on vacation, but you would want to at least be aware of it.

[Igel]

2. My parents were steelworkers.

They got 4 weeks vacation a year.

When I was a kid, it was announced that the company would say when two of those weeks would be taken. You didn't have to take vacation before, you didn't have to take your other two weeks, but suddenly you had to take these particular two weeks. They may happen in July. They might happen in October.

Why?

Because it was when they'd shut down the blast furnaces for cleaning and relining. Those workers were forbidden to take vacation those weeks.

Others have mandatory vacation--or you lose it. Now, saying which two weeks it had to be is a different story. I'm assuming that Formula One does it not out of concern for the racers but out of concern for some issue of fairness--competition makes it unlikely some would take the time off, or there's downtime in which nobody tinkers or trains. On the other hand, if you really want time off for something that takes most of your vacation, well, two weeks are stipulated because, as with my parent-steelworkers, the organization they worked for decided when it was convenient for them to take a vacation.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

3. Sounds like a Formula 1 mandate

rather than a country mandate. Are U.S. Formula 1 teams required to comply as well?

[groundloop]

5. Yes, this is an F1 mandate and yes, the sole US based F1 team has to comply

There's only one US based F1 team at the moment, Haas Racing. Yes, this is a Formula 1 mandate as opposed to any directive from individual contries, but F1 is based in Europe. My thoughts on this are that the Europeans are much more progressive in how they treat employees, and this is just another example. It would be very easy for F1 not to do this, hold a couple more races each year, and make more profit.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. We force people to take vacation

We have permissive time off at my work. If you don't use enough of it though they will force you to take time off.

I know people don't think so, but corporate America is starting to catch into the fact that workers are more productive if they get a fair amount if time off.

[underahedgerow]

7. In France (yeah, sorry) all employees get 1 month vacation per year. Most opt to take the majority

of it in August. There are many national holidays throughout the year that give lots of long weekends as well. Paris is famous for being empty of residents in August, and it's glorious. All the private shops and restaurants are shut down, the city is so quiet! Most Parisiens who leave have family with a house somewhere else in France, or they go camping, or they go on inexpensive holidays if they're on a budget. (I won't talk about the families with a chateau in Normandy and a villa in St. Maxime)

Kids get a 2 week break from school every 6 weeks, timed to fall nicely over the Xmas and Easter holidays as well.

Kids also have staggered school times; all kids finish school by noon on Wednesday. Other days, there is a long enough lunch break that the little kids can go home for lunch. Kids get their schedule at the beginning of the year, and each get will get one day a week where they don't start until 10am. Some will finish at 2, or 3, but can occasionally stay as late as 6 if they get a really crappy schedule, but that's for the oldest kids.

If families are dependent on the social system, they can apply for funds to take a modest vacation, and the state will throw them a couple hundred bucks.

Any person going to college can get assistance from the state for housing and meals, and if your income is below the stated limit and your rent is within certain guidelines, you automatically get housing assistance. It takes a few weeks to get it started once you turn in all the correct papers.

Oh and every kid is entitled to a couple hundred bucks a year towards school supplies, no matter what income. At Xmas, people on the social system get 200 bucks for the holidays.

It's very civilized.

[yuiyoshida]

8. I remember when I worked at a hospital ...

You had a choice, to take a vacation or get paid vacation money and work. Guess what people here did? They worked and got their vacation pay...why? Because living in Santa Barbara was expensive (like most California towns) It was pathetic. People were even more strained because they worked their vacation just to pay their bills. One person told me, "Where would I go? Who can afford to go anywhere when you live in this town". I loved Santa Barbara but I just left, because it was too expensive.. Now so is San Francisco...