In some companies you get even more weeks ("RTTs") to compensate for the hours you do over 35hrs/week. The company I work for gives me the usual 5 weeks plus 3 weeks of RTTs which brings the total to 8 weeks, i.e. almost 2 months per year (!)
Yep... Some of my ex-classmates from engineering schools who stayed in France now have 45+ holidays per year. One even has 52 holidays per year. FIFTY TWO! And that's excluding bank holidays!
French employees aren't paid on their standard holidays? It also seems strange that if you're working over the 35/hr week baseline and being compensated for it by extra leave, that you would not be paid during that leave. After all, you're working extra for that time off, so you've essentially just already worked those weeks in advance.
How is it? My salary gives a per annum rate. I have a flextime system where if I work >38 hours in a week I get a 1:1 credit of those hours to take off later, and I don't lose any pay whatsoever for it.
In the same vein, this deal means that because the person works [35+x] hours per week, they get 2 weeks extra later on (where I assume x*48 = 70 or so) to take off without losing any pay. I don't see how you claim that they lose pay considering the work the same number of total hours for the same amount of pay, they just take 2 weeks' of work time, chop it up, and sprinkle it over the other 46.
But the point is, that in the true sense you don't really get any paid holidays.
If your employer considers you worth $120K, then with 2 months of holidays, he will simply pay you $100K spread over 12 months.
In other words, paid or unpaid doesn't mean anything (other than a lack of option to those who don't want these vacations) as long as the employer and employee are free to negotiate the salary.
Salaries are the same at companies that offer RTTs and companies that do not. I’ve more RTTs and I’m more paid that all my friends with the same profile in similar companies.
I don't think you understood my point. Lemme put it this way, if govt in France made it a law that you must pay 10% tip to the waiters at the restaurant, do you really think that the waiters would really be 10% richer?
If this were the law, would you not simply consider the cost of dining at a Restaurant to have gone up by 10%? And if that were the case then your eating out behavior would change the same way if restaurants DID raise their prices by 10%.
Since waiters are getting 10% more from the customers, this means restaurant owners will reduce the wages of the waiters by 10% and reduce the prices of the food by 10% (so at the end the waiters end up getting the same amount of salary, it costs the same amount to you to eat at a restaurant and the profit margin of the restaurant owner remains the same).
The fact is, that a company does not (and cannot, even if they wanted to) differentiate between "vacation" part and "salary" part of the employee compensation package. At the end of the day, the vacation costs them money and paying employee salary also costs them money. So when a company decides what compensation package to offer to a candidate.
For instance, if an employee would bring a marginal productivity of $100K in a year, then either they can offer 10% time off (26.1 days off, assuming 261 working days) + 90% in cash, or they can offer 0% in time off and 100% of the salary it would be the same to them.
Technically as the number of vacation time goes up, the cost to the company goes up too (if you took 6 months off, then this means the company might have to get new employees to fill for the remaining six years, which could be expensive).
In your example, you're just valued that much more by your company than your friends are by their companies.
35 hours + 4 weeks of holidays = 37h per week + 4 weeks of holidays + 2.5 weeks of RTT.
The salary is averaged over the year and you're paid the same every month in both cases.
Someone who does 37h per week + 4 weeks of holidays + NO RTT, would be paid more over the year.
The hours are driven down and the yearly pay is driven down as well, because of the 35h and the RTT. It's subtle but it's happening.
Note that in theory, you can have the choice to not take the RTT and work instead. In practise, all employers force you to take the holidays so you don't get a choice.
The GP mentioned 5 weeks vacation + public holidays. To make my example easier, let's say that I worked in France and decided to take the month of July off (using the 5 weeks vacation). Would I get paid for that vacation? Or is the 5 weeks vacation unpaid??
In Canada, my vacation is paid, so if I take an entire month off, I collect my pay cheques as usual.
I'm calling BS on that. No, you get paid during your holidays in France, wathever the type, RTT or annual leave. In addition to that, you can take unpaid leave.
Perhaps you were a contractor? In that case you would not be paid when you're not working.
No he's simply pointing out that your employer can only pay you what the market is allowing him to pay you. Or in other words, your salary is what your marginal productivity to the company is.
If you are not working for 2 months a year, then you're getting paid for only 10 months of what you could have gotten over 12 months.
In other words, there ain't no such thing as 'paid vacation' when the employer can simply account for that 'paid vacation' when making you an offer.
In some companies you get even more weeks ("RTTs") to compensate for the hours you do over 35hrs/week. The company I work for gives me the usual 5 weeks plus 3 weeks of RTTs which brings the total to 8 weeks, i.e. almost 2 months per year (!)