Was talking with a friend about her SO's company moving towards PTO Banking and we were trying to figure out what the advantage was to the company offering it and how it might disadvantage the workers.
Off the top of my head here's a couple things I came up with:
- Have to earn which means an ongoing emergency that taps you out before you can bank it can leave you screwed
- If your hours change, the amount of PTO Banking you get for the year might as well.
- In some states unused vacation time is paid out on separation, meaning with PTO Banking you haven't banked yet, you're SOL.
I think those are right, but if anyone has a decent write up that's known to be accurate that I can share instead of my own ramblings that'd be great.
Edit: Apologies, I switched over from PTO Banking (typical term for earning time off that combines sick and vacation days) in the title to just PTO in post and think that may have caused some confusions. I've fixed it. Thanks for the answers so far, looking forward to more.
This is why some companies move to "unlimited PTO" so they don't track anything and get mad if you actually take more than two weeks off
As someone that's always had some kind of PTO system, I'm not clear on the distinction. The companies I've worked at afford you a set number of PTO Vacation Hours and Sick Hours (sometimes just Vacation Hours) per year. These numbers tend to go up with seniority, so managers get more PTO than entry level hires. And while you accrue them annually, I've yet to see anyone particularly hostile to going into "PTO Debt" if you have something on your calendar when you start or experience an emergency.
When I changed jobs in 2014, I started at the firm the week before my wedding. They were more than happy to just front me the balance in time off with the expectation I wouldn't be leaving the company inside the next few months.
That said, one thing I've seen with PTO is the outstanding balance of hours which can expire annually. This effectively forces people to take vacation or lose "paid" labor. Idk if you're suggestion Vacation/Sick days work the same way. I do know some teachers with a balance of days-off that never expired, such that they could feasibly take off months or years at a time if they choose (they almost never do, though). I also have had employers offer to buy out my PTO at my current wage rate. Given that the PTO was accrued when I was paid less, this was a reasonably good deal. But since my billing rate was 3x my wage, it was a much better deal for my boss.
In the end, it just feels like a question of utility. Do you get the time off or don't you? Time that expires and time that is inaccessible by bureaucracy amounts to wage theft. But, after that, it feels like little more than an accounting mechanic.
I've had PTO banking before and have a vacation system now. The main difference is that I get my full vacation allotment regardless of hours worked. With a PTO system, one could end up with less available PTO due to cuts to hours because business is down. It's also a way to obfuscate how much time off an employee will actually get. For me I know exactly how much time off I get every year, when it will increase, and by how much with no estimation of hours or math required.
Depending on how it's implemented, the biggest issue IMO is that you're punishing anyone who gets sick or has a chronic illness with less or no vacation. It's a major blow to anyone with a disability that causes them to miss work.
I'm not familiar with any writing on the subject, possibly because companies can implement it more or less however they want and so none of the terminology or rules are consistent
This is my beef with PTO banking. It's almost always set up so if you work 40hrs/wk every week you get a round number like 15 days per year (3 weeks). If you miss a single day you then end up with 14.954 days and now you only have 2 weeks of vacation, 4 days, and change. I was out sick or injured (non work injury) over 6 weeks in the last year and still get all my vacation time. PTO is just more enshittification.
This is less of a pto question and more of a methodology.
Some places have paid time off accumulate based on time worked, some do them per year/time.
Then you have a limit option. Is it limited per year? Is there rollover?
Are sick days counted different than planned days? (Vacation is planned in advance)
I don’t have a true left wing take on it other than people should be able to not always be working and should have the freedom to experience life, therefore vacation days are a good thing.
"Leftist" analysis of why pig poop balls is socialist and why anime is reactionary and anyone who watches it deserves to be actually guillotined = posts with 100+ comments
Posts like this with people actually looking for what to do in real life dealing with economic situations and material conditions = posts with <25 comments (if you're lucky)
It is one of many ways to obfuscate the nature of your employment relationship.
Instead of getting the full value of your labor, you get pennies on the dollar for your labor... but every now and then, you get paid for doing nothing! Just like your boss!
Profit-driven companies are always going to haggle down PTO or subject it to conditions where it ends up much less than what it sounds like at first.
A separate vacation/sick day system still allows employees to call in sick to extend their vacation. PTO banking doesn't really do much for the employee.
But it's impossible to talk about this without spotlighting the enforcement side of it. What happens when an employee takes more days off than they have banked? The answer is usually some sort of point system, where a few days of absence can jeopardize a worker's employment.
