I got this idea reading a thread about the “Gods Army” convoy to the border. Several people posted things like “don’t these people have jobs”?, or “how do they have the time to go to the border”? And it got me thinking that it’s bullshit for your boss to have veto on your political activities.
I understand that “Gods Army” are chuds, it’s just the principal.
According to HR I have “unlimited time-off” and I just have to coordinate my time-off with my manager.
Of course, this quarter we have really tight deadlines on our project. Next quarter will be all the meetings pre-planning the phased rollout in Q3, can’t miss those. In Q3 we have another hard deadline for production and Q4 everyone else is out so we need people to cover.
“unlimited time off” is a scam. Actually any non-government mandated leave is dubious.
In Australia, you get 4 weeks PTO (called “annual leave” here) by law, which accrues if you don’t use it and is paid out when you resign or are laid off. Companies want you to take this leave because otherwise your accrued leave becomes a liability.
Most places I’ve worked, everyone sees people going on leave as a very positive thing.
We also get 10 days of sick leave which accrues every year as well so you can save your annual leave for vacations.
I worked for a company that had this, and for the most part everyone was fine with it, my boss included. We just had to make sure we had coverage, etc. It also puts pressure on the employee not to abuse it. I didn’t work with people that took an excessive amount of time off anyway, as people still took whatever 'normal" PTO they would have (a day here and there, extending a holiday weekend an extra day, one or two small vacations, etc).
It can be okay. But in most companies it turns out people take less leave if it’s “unlimited” due to peer- and self-pressure.
“Use it or lose it” tends to get people to use the most because you’re losing out on part of your benefits package. It being paid out instead of actually “losing it” is a nice middle ground but also results in less leave being taken.