Vacation Time - How Much Did You Get?

Jules

Jules

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When you were employed, how much vacation time did you get?

I’m sitting here listening to family members trying to figure how to schedule their vacation days. I’d forgotten the frustration.

The last place where I worked for 20 years, by the end I had built up to four weeks. I also had leeway because of an earned flex day off every third week and I could bank that.

There were also 9 (10 now) Statutory holidays and might be some government holidays that would be a day off in some workplaces.
 

I spent 9 years working for Metro Ambulance which was a department of the city of Toronto. We worked 12 hour shifts, either days or nights , starting at either 7 am or 7 pm. IN a six week rotation there are 42 days, we only worked 20 of them. In a week we worked 3 or 4 days out of 7. Once every 6 weeks we had a entire 7 days period off, which was not counted as vacation time. BY careful planning, and swapping shifts with others who were on a different platoon, I was able to go a whole 3 months without working a shift. One summer I went on a extended tour of Australia, from May to August. Of course I had to work the shifts that I had swapped for, when I came back to work, plus my regular work days. I left after 9 years, due to repeated on the job injuries. Too many 400 pounders who lived on the 3rd floor of the no elevator pre WW 1 apartments. It was VERY easy to get hurt on that job. Slipping on a icy set of steps, or trying to remove a person from a wrecked car. I had a 8 month long shoulder injury that required surgical repair by a orthopedic doctor at Toronto General Hospital. Fortunately my injury was well documented on the day I was injured, and I was 100 percent paid by the Ontario Worker's Compensation fund during my time off. When I came back I was assigned "light duties " at headquarters for a further 3 months, doing public tours of the building, and acting as a spokesperson for the department. I still have problems with my right shoulder, 35 years later. JimB.
 
jimintoronto said:
I spent 9 years working for Metro Ambulance which was a department of the city of Toronto. We worked 12 hour shifts, either days or nights , starting at either 7 am or 7 pm. IN a six week rotation there are 42 days, we only worked 20 of them. In a week we worked 3 or 4 days out of 7. Once every 6 weeks we had a entire 7 days period off, which was not counted as vacation time. BY careful planning, and swapping shifts with others who were on a different platoon, I was able to go a whole 3 months without working a shift. One summer I went on a extended tour of Australia, from May to August. Of course I had to work the shifts that I had swapped for, when I came back to work, plus my regular work days. I left after 9 years, due to repeated on the job injuries. Too many 400 pounders who lived on the 3rd floor of the no elevator pre WW 1 apartments. It was VERY easy to get hurt on that job. Slipping on a icy set of steps, or trying to remove a person from a wrecked car. I had a 8 month long shoulder injury that required surgical repair by a orthopedic doctor at Toronto General Hospital. Fortunately my injury was well documented on the day I was injured, and I was 100 percent paid by the Ontario Worker's Compensation fund during my time off. When I came back I was assigned "light duties " at headquarters for a further 3 months, doing public tours of the building, and acting as a spokesperson for the department. I still have problems with my right shoulder, 35 years later. JimB.
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I can attest to that. Law Enforcement scheduling varies wildly and there are many ways to work out your preferred shifts. It took me quite a while to figure out how to maximize my vacation time.

Starting out, I got 4 hours for every 14 day pay period so roughly at least 5 days off a year but they add up if you count overtime which adds more to it and one more free hour is added for every 5 years. At one point, I had about almost a month of vacation time but it had to do with rank as well.
You could also ask for more time which has to be approved by your superior. I shouldn't be talking about it in present tense as I'm sure it's changed quite a bit now.
To sum it up, I got plenty of vacation time. Maybe not as much as other jobs but it wasn't bad. The problem was it was not often I got to have the 8-5, 5 days a week schedule because it was almost always more hours and more days. Hence, overtime and extra vacation time.
 

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RFW said:
I can attest to that. Law Enforcement scheduling varies wildly and there are many ways to work out your preferred shifts. It took me quite a while to figure out how to maximize my vacation time.

Starting out, I got 4 hours for every 14 day pay period so roughly at least 5 days off a year but they add up if you count overtime which adds more to it and one more free hour is added for every 5 years. At one point, I had about almost a month of vacation time but it had to do with rank as well.
You could also ask for more time which has to be approved by your superior. I shouldn't be talking about it in present tense as I'm sure it's changed quite a bit now.
To sum it up, I got plenty of vacation time. Maybe not as much as other jobs but it wasn't bad. The problem was it was not often I got to have the 8-5, 5 days a week schedule because it was almost always more hours and more days. Hence, overtime and extra vacation time.
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At the time I was working for Metro Toronto Ambulance ( 1977 to 1986 ) we were the second highest paid job category in the city union. The highest paid union guys were the marine engine engineers on the city ferry boats. Now in 2022, Toronto Paramedics start at $66,900 a year, with OT and court time they gross about $77,000 a year, After 5 years they are at $96,000 a year. Of course they have to have passed a 2 year University training course and have a license to practice just like a Doctor does. A far cry from the wild west days when it was "scoop and run fast to the hospital ". I just remembered that back then we got 18 sick days a year, with full pay for that day off. If I was working and felt bad, I could call, dispatch half way through my 12 hour shift and book sick, and I would be paid for the entire 12 hours. If you didn't use some of your sick days by the end of the year, you could carry them over into the following year. By the time I resigned after 9 years, I had 43 sick days that I cashed in . That value was added to my pension contributions, which amounted to about $33,000 paid out to me. JImB.
 
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I'm not sure what my first job gave, my second job I think gave 2 weeks, and it was slowly increasing over the years but then another company bought us and they had a lower limit of a month (not that I was near the limit but it was depressing anyway), then my next job (after the 2008 economy issues) paid much worse salaries but gave us a whole month of combined types of time off which was nice.
Then the job after that was a contract-to-hire that had zero vacation and I had to work 1000 hours before I even got paid for major holidays. That situation dragged on for three years (had been advertised as just 6 months to hiring) though I think after a year or more I started to get 5 days vacation eventually. But, at least I got paid for overtime as a contractor which I never received before or after.
When finally hired I was given 3 weeks vacation but a half a year later the company was bought by another company and I was reduced to two and a half weeks, and I stayed at that until I retired this month. For the past year plus I've used up all my sick leave days as if they were vacation so that made it more like having 4 weeks.
 
I can't remember. I think that when I started with 'Big Blue', it started at 20 days a year + statutory hols + 2 discretionary days. This was reasonable in the UK, but Europeans had more statutory hols. This gradually rose to 25 days. I believe that in the year you reached 20 years service, you got an extra week.
We could also bank hols and accumulate days off from flexi-time.
 
80 hours personal, 200 hours vacation annually, accumulate a total of 400. That's what I sold back @ retirement + 26 weeks severance.
 
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RFW said:
This cracks me up. Mine would be "point and pray". Forgot to mention, retired police officer here. Only high school diploma required back then.
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I was a Auxiliary Constable with Toronto Police Service from 1978 to 1989, which was a volunteer position. Trained on pistols and shotguns, but not normally armed on duty. We always worked with an armed regular officer. Because my Ambulance job had such good days off, I could do at least one or two Auxiliary shifts most weeks. Unlike the majority of the Auxiliaries, who liked doing parades and community festivals, I liked going out on patrol and some of the guys I rolled with respected that I was probably more experienced at emergency driving than they were. They knew for sure that I was not going to hide if things got serious. In those days it was unusual for a copper to take a hand gun off of a subject. JimB.
 
I worked as a carpenter for 40 years...had several contractors, but they and I both agreed the whole time. If I worked an hour, I got paid an hour, if I didn't work, I didn't get paid. I till think that is how it should be. Let me add this went for holidays as well, I will say once I did get paid for Christmas vacation. I was laid off from construction back in the 80s and found a job in a small factory. the fist of December I got called back to construction. Went to the factory guy and told him I was leaving. He said work three more weeks and we will pay you for Christmas. For the next three weeks I worked from 6 in the morning till 1:30 on the job site and from 3:30 till midnight in the factory. Till January first last day in the factory.
 
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jimintoronto said:
I was a Auxiliary Constable with Toronto Police Service from 1978 to 1989, which was a volunteer position. Trained on pistols and shotguns, but not normally armed on duty. We always worked with an armed regular officer. Because my Ambulance job had such good days off, I could do at least one or two Auxiliary shifts most weeks. Unlike the majority of the Auxiliaries, who liked doing parades and community festivals, I liked going out on patrol and some of the guys I rolled with respected that I was probably more experienced at emergency driving than they were. They knew for sure that I was not going to hide if things got serious. In those days it was unusual for a copper to take a hand gun off of a subject. JimB.
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That's commendable. I knew most of the auxiliary officers who wouldn't dare tag along. For the better, most of the time as we didn't need anything more to watch out for and we usually made an arrest in pairs.
 
Don M. said:
The company gave 3 weeks vacation, every year, and if we didn't use it all we could "save" it for future use. When I retired, I had about 7 weeks built up, and they paid me an extra 7 weeks salary.
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same thing happens here in many places. You can carry your holiday entitlement over and take it as paid leave or accrue it..
 
I cannot remember how the weeks were according to how many years on etc.....
But i do remember for many years i used vacation days to cover extra day off every so often because it was never about how much time you had but IF they approved time off
No one to cover my job so they could not spare a whole week etc........ but others whose job was easily covered could take up to a month at a time.
 
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RFW said:
That's commendable. I knew most of the auxiliary officers who wouldn't dare tag along. For the better, most of the time as we didn't need anything more to watch out for and we usually made an arrest in pairs.
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Toronto Police, even back then were 2 man units from 7 pm to 7 am. I was riding with singles, like traffic enforcement, radar cars, and SGTS and the divisional supervisor and the divisional prisoner wagon. I also ran first aid training for the Auxiliary units across the city. Today TPS has about 700 Auxiliary officers and many of them are multi lingual speaking 2 or 3 languages , which helps with translation in a city that speaks 125 different languages. JimB.
 
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4 weeks after 10 years of service. I think we had 10 paid holidays, worked rotating shifts but would be paid for holidays worked. Had lot's of "built-in" overtime as the County liked to run understaffed, but the positions were mandated by law, and had to be filled.
 
5 weeks, but I was rarely allowed to use more than 2 weeks.

I was pretty stupid.

Indispensable, but stupid :giggle:

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men." - Charles de Gaulle
 

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