days of actual annual paid leave

[lgillian]

Hello,

As I known, there are 30 days paid leave for an employee. But Saturday is also counted as holidays. How many days are used in the following situations?
1) take vocation from Monday to Friday.
2) take vocation from Tuesday to next Monday.

Five days or Six days are counted?

[Upphew]

As I known, there are 30 days paid leave for an employee.

2 weekdays/month for first year or 2,5 weekdays/month after that.

But Saturday is also counted as holidays. How many days are used in the following situations?

Saturday is counted as weekday.

1) take vocation from Monday to Friday.

In my opinion 5.

2) take vocation from Tuesday to next Monday.

In my opinion 6.

If you start to optimize too much, you might end up taking the holiday when the employer wants:

Section 20 - Time of granting annual holiday
An employee is granted annual holiday at a time determined by the employer, unless the
employer and the employee agree on arranging the holiday in the manner referred to in section
21.

http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2005/en20050162

[Rip]

1) take vocation from Monday to Friday.

In my opinion 5.

2) take vocation from Tuesday to next Monday.

In my opinion 6.

Last time I had to consider these both options 1) AND 2) would have equalled six days. A full working week off equalled six days. If you had your vacation in smaller increments the kept tabs on how many "loose" days you had had and subtracted one extra vacation day after every fifth. I think I never really understood exactly what was the handling of public holidays within a vacation period.

If you start to optimize too much, you might end up taking the holiday when the employer wants:

Section 20 - Time of granting annual holiday
An employee is granted annual holiday at a time determined by the employer, unless the
employer and the employee agree on arranging the holiday in the manner referred to in section
21.

http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2005/en20050162[/quote]

[Rick1]

So if a Fin tells you how advanced country this is, you can always ask; and you started with the holidays simplification?

[tjawatts]

For every 5 real week days you take off you mark 1 Saturday. Definitely part of the system that needs an overhaul.

So 25 real weekdays, or 5 weeks holiday

T

[riku2]

Saturday is also counted as holidays. How many days are used in the following situations?
1) take vocation from Monday to Friday.
2) take vocation from Tuesday to next Monday.

Five days or Six days are counted?

it's a completely stupid situation in finland and the law is not rewritten because most finns take whole week holidays and would not cause trouble by taking tuesday - next monday like you are attempting to do.
My reading of the law was that a holiday that includes a friday counts as two days (friday + saturday).
This means you could cheat the rules by never taking fridays (only mon-thu) but then your company would complain and tell you that you are cheating and should take your holiday like fellow finns do (whole weeks).

The 30 days = 5 weeks rule (counting saturdays) doesn't actually work 100% since there is a saturday public holiday in june at midsummer. So There is a way to get one extra holiday (since if you take the week with midsummer in it then how could you count that saturday as a holiday when it's already a public holiday). This loophole does not apply to finns though since they start their summer holidays AFTER midsummer and not before. Only troublesome foreigners would take it before that. And god help any south africans or australians resident in Finland who want a month off in January to go home.

The main problem i've had with holidays is some managers have insisted I follow the mandatory two weeks holiday in a row during the summer holiday season. You must take this whether you want to or not (south africans and australians watch out!).

[ritan7471]

As others have said, 5 of your 30 days are Saturday days.

Your employer should be keeping track of how many Saturday days you are charged, so that if your employer lets you take your holidays in bits and pieces, and you always, for example, take Wednesday through Monday off, you should not be charged for any Saturdays after the first 5.

Hope this helps!

[Adrian42]

Hello,

As I known, there are 30 days paid leave for an employee. But Saturday is also counted as holidays. How many days are used in the following situations?
1) take vocation from Monday to Friday.
2) take vocation from Tuesday to next Monday.

Five days or Six days are counted?

One week in any case.

When you have the full 30 days based on a 6 day week, just calculate with 25 days when you have a 5 day week and the result will be correct.

Let's go from this simple problem to a more difficult part of the holiday law:

Did you actually earn the full 30/25 days?

If you were not already working at April 1st of this year at your current employer, then you will have much less than the 30/25 days in holidays in 2013.

[riku2]

As others have said, 5 of your 30 days are Saturday days.

This isn't true. If you read the law then it does not say that.

"5 of the 30 days are saturdays" are how most people (and HR departments apply it) but if someone bought a court case then it would not stand up since the law does not specify that. There is no court case to clear this yet since most finns take whole weeks during the summer and don't want to challenge the law.

The law actually says that you use your 30 days up when you do not work a "weekday" and weekdays are defined in the holiday law as below:

a weekday means a day other than Sundays, church festivals, Independence Day,Christmas Eve, Midsummer Eve, Easter Saturday and the First of May.

So the 1 week = 6 days comes from saturday being a "weekday" in the holiday act and notionally when you have a job you are paid for 6 days a week (mon-sat) and if you don't work a weekday then it comes out of your annual holiday allowance.

But if you take a week off work and the saturday of that week is like above (eg christmas eve on a saturday) then it is 5 days away from work, not six days.

By no co-incidence most of the special non-weekday saturdays are outside the summer holiday period. Otherwise the law would probably have been written differently. So this special clause only applies to things like all saints day (November), Independence day (December), Christmas Day + Eve (December), Easter Saturday (March/April), First May (May).

[Upphew]

There is no court case to clear this yet since most finns take whole weeks during the summer and don't want to challenge the law.

That and it is the employers decision to give the holiday in shorter parts. They can always say that your holiday is from x to y. Deal with it.

[Liam1]

Interesting to know...
So the message is don't compare 30 days with other countries and don't let your HR dept tell you that you are better off because you have 30 days holiday (rather than say 25 days in UK)

Guess it is only foreigners that feel "conned" about this as Finns know that 30 days doesn't equal 6 weeks.

[Upphew]

Guess it is only foreigners that feel "conned" about this as Finns know that 30 days doesn't equal 6 weeks.

Indeed!

[riku2]

Guess it is only foreigners that feel "conned" about this as Finns know that 30 days doesn't equal 6 weeks.

This is not the end of it since people from english speaking countries will be used to public holidays always falling on a monday-friday (eg if new years day is a sunday then the next monday is a public holiday). It was somewhat of a shock when moving to Finland that this rule is limited to english speaking countries (UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore etc), everyone else in the world: hard luck if christmas day is a sunday (double bad luck since the following Jan 1st holiday is also lost).

Finns don't throw up their hands in horror because to them this is just the way things have always been (as for the rest of europe).

The articles in the english media about "the french get more public holidays than the brits" seem to forget this issue though. In the UK you always get a constant number of public holidays (although some years there are extra for royal weddings, jubilee etc). In Finland it can drop drastically and also the holidays can sometimes fall in the middle of the week, unlike UK where long weekends are the norm.

The "earning" concept of finnish holidays is also a bit mean. Join a company on 1st june 2013 and you get no holiday at all for 2013. In english speaking countries if you join halfway through the year then you get half of THAT YEARS holidays to use in THAT year.

[Liam1]

Riku - my total ignorance of the earning concept for holidays allowed me to do the best bit of negotiation that I have ever done and totally unintentionally!

When I first moved to Scandinavia, I couldn't understand why the HR guy was being so pig headed about giving me a year's worth of holidays so in the end I said if I don't get holidays I'm not coming! I only meant the right to have holidays, and it was only when I left to come to Finland and got an extra month's pay for my "earned holiday entitlement" that I realised why the HR guy was so upset! If I had known, I wouldn't have had the chutzpah to ask for this!

[riku2]

Riku - my total ignorance of the earning concept for holidays allowed me to do the best bit of negotiation that I have ever done and totally unintentionally!

This also applied to me. The recruiting manager asked how much holiday I'd like in the first year, I said half a year's allowance (since I joined around May). Only later did I realise that if he had not done this then I would have spent the first year with zero holidays. I also wondered why he asked the question and thought it unimportant.