15 April 2019 - 13:04The Easter holidays are upon us. Many will be enthusiastically taking time off believing they will be enjoying a “paid holiday”. A holiday paid for by their ever-obliging employers, that is. But they are wrong, especially if they work in the private sector. They will in fact be sacrificing salary or wages for the time they spend not working.
It makes no sense for some employer, the owner of a business with a natural concern for the bottom line, to pay you for time spent on holiday — or weekends off, or when sleeping, or travelling to or from work. They are unlikely to survive the competition if they do not take into account the loss of production, revenue and profits incurred when their employees are not working. Those known costs must mean salaries, wages and employment benefits given up by the worker.
It is those who are paid on a predetermined monthly or rather annual basis who may be inclined to believe they are being paid to go on holiday. They should appreciate that the more time they take off, or the larger the contributions the employer may be making to medical insurance or pension contributions or training levies, the less they will inevitably be taking home in their monthly pay check.
European workers typically take many more days off than their American or SA counterparts. It is a widening trend that has evolved only over the past 30 or so years. And we are often surprised by how little time the typical American worker takes off.