[Dries007]

Notes from Belgium:

- A full time working week is 38h by law. If you do work 40h, you get that time (so 12 days/year) back to compensate. There are talks about a 34h workweek, but that seems unlikely in the near future IMO. We tend to have 30m lunch breaks, not the 2h long siesta like in the south.

- You are required to take your holidays. Your employer can get in serious trouble if you don't, so "leaving vacations days unused" almost doesn't exist. Some systems allow you to transfer your extra legal holidays to next year, but the base 20 you basically have to take every year.

- We also have 10 public holidays. If you have to work on those, you get to recoup the day. Same goes for work on Sunday for most people, if Sunday work is even allowed in your sector.

- Sick days are normally not something you have to worry about as an employee, provided you have a doters note (which costs you 4€ for the visit). Although most places are starting to relax the note requirement for short (1-3 day) things. For short sick leave, you'll get 100% of your wage from your employer. Once it becomes a long term thing, you fall back on the health care system, which usually covers 70% of your wage. Some employers contribute the other 30%.

- Health care wise: We pay contributions via our wages into a "mutuality" based system. There are a few choices (1 government run, the rest are non profits) that offer different benefits, but the base coverage is mostly the same. Enrollment in this system is mandatory. More and more employers offer supplementary healthcare that can have benefits like full reimbursement of brand medicine instead of only the cost of generics, getting private rooms during hospitalizations for free, additional dental coverage, a new pair of glasses every year, ...

Note that this is all assuming you are an employee, not self-employed. There are also some legal differences between blue- and white-collar workers, but are slowly being removed over time.

[mo_42]

> - You are required to take your holidays. Your employer can get in serious trouble if you don't, so "leaving vacations days unused" almost doesn't exist. Some systems allow you to transfer your extra legal holidays to next year, but the base 20 you basically have to take every year.

I think I understand the rationale behind this. Basically people should take some rest every now and then. Personally, I consider this a violation of my freedom to work however I like. I like to work and usually I take just a few days off per year so I can, for example, visit the dentist without being stressed out to miss a work-related meeting. 20 days is basically an entire month of work. So people there work only 11/12 per year.

[ytwySXpMbS]

You seriously wouldn't want to work less? You aren't penalised for taking the time off.

I see it more as protecting the employee from exploitation.

[ryandrake]

My employer allows you to accrue vacation days up to a limit, and then, they cap out and stop accruing. So basically what that means is whenever I am one day away from hitting the cap, I just burn a Friday as vacation so I can continue to accrue. It kind of sucks. One day isn’t really enough to do much so I end up running errands and stuff. I’d rather just bank vacation days forever and get paid out for them all at once when I quit (as is required in California).