Hello!!

In Aus, if you work for an employer for a long enough time you get "long service leave". Mine accrued today (and I am on holidays right now). I get 63 days of leave this year (12 weeks 3 days) instead of the usual 20 (4 weeks). Initially it was so we would have enough time to get on a boat and visit our families back in the mother country but that doesn't really apply anymore, with planes and all.

Do you have any similar scheme in your country and what is the usual amount of annual leave/annual holiday leave you would get in a normal year?

Here it's called a sabbatical, and most working folks do not have one.

In Aus, it is, by law, a term of every employment contract that long service leave be granted after a minimum period of time. If most folk don't have sabbaticals is that because it's not mandatory to be included in all employment contracts or people have the option but don't take it cos they like working?

Teachers here get 2 and a half months off every year during the summer. A lot of times they have "summer jobs" to complement their income, or they are busy getting a master's degree or doctorate.

But every once in awhile, they take that time off.

US law doesn't mandate any minimum amount of time so what we get here varies greatly.

I get a pretty good amount of time off per year (even by non-US standards).

I believe most higher education professors here (at least those with tenure) get sabbatical after 6 years of service, though I believe a sabbatical is (at least intended to be) more of a "business leave" ie: take time off to do research, take courses, etc. to make sure you up-to-date on your subject area and they get the entire school year for this.

I think most employees in the US get at most 2 weeks paid vacation a year. It all depends on the employer/contracts/unions. Even then you wouldn't want to take those 2 weeks all at once as it'll make you vulnerable to be let go if you start falling behind when you return, and your company is looking to let people go.

As I was told by several Georgian people while in that country, "America likes to work."

Here we have mandated minimum 20 working days of holidays, which translates to about a month. The actual figure can be anywhere between 20 and 30 working days, depending on your education, family status, years of working experience, position in the company... You can, for some reason, choose to waive your right to go on an annual leave and receive payment corresponding to your allowed number of days instead.

But the sad reality is that, because of the critical unemployment rate in my country, private employers often deny their workers the right to an annual leave, and even force them to work for 10 or 12 hours a day for an inadequate pay. Workers have to put up with it because if they don't like these conditions, there are hundreds more unemployed persons that will gladly take their place.

Need to be pregnant here to get something like that unfortunately :)

Sort of. Those jobs are usually to pay for the certification costs that the taxpayers are too cheap to pay for. Certification costs in much of the US can run into the thousands of dollars each year.

So, the summer jobs are in part to pay for the certification classes that the government requires, but refuses to pay for.

In general though, the pay isn't sufficient for folks to be able to just take that time off without working, unless one lives incredibly frugally during the year. Why we can't just pay teachers a rate of pay commensurate to what other people with a similar level of education get is beyond me. Sort of, when tenure occurs will vary. But full time faculty at college will generally just be full time during the school year teaching for 2 semesters or 3 quarters.

But, in practice, in order to retain their jobs they'll have to be in the lab or equivalent year round to publish their papers so that they get to keep their jobs. Being a professor is as much about the research you do as the classes you teach.

Here you get a few weeks off every time you get a new child. the so called parenting leave. Other than that, everyone has a mandated yearly minimum 20-25ish days off. Unless you have some special clause in your contract, having anything more than that is very rare.

I don't see how you've contradicted what I've said to make it "sort of". Perhaps it's because I just woke up. :)

They're not really wrong though, in some sense. The priority there is spending time with your family and in your home with friends. They see us as career driven and caring about money, success and power more than the little things. I don't think they're really that far off.

Pretty much the first thing anyone said to me when I returned to the US was either "wow that will help you get a better job" or "so when are you getting a new job?"

Part of that is because you can't even have many of the little things here if you don't have a "good job".

You're not wrong, I'm just saying it's the result rather than the reason.