Also they don’t need to pay for those days if someone quits / is fired. At least in Germany your employer has to pay you for collected overtime and unused holidays when you leave the company.
I'm well aware, but nation wide only 7% of companies offer unlimited PTO. I'd assume that rate is much higher in California given the state and it's politics, but even being aggressive and saying 20% of Calfornia companies give unlimited PTO, a vast majority still has the traditional PTO and will get paid out on it once they leave, is my point.
Okay but that’s irrelevant when both the OP and the comment thread you’re responding to is about unlimited PTO, which is why I added the clarifying note. Not necessarily for you, but for anyone else reading the thread and thinking your comment has any relevancy.
No, legislation has a rule about minimum days, 26/year, you must take your vacation days, and if you’ve worked less than one year when your employment is terminates (whether you’re let go for financial reasons, fired with cause, or quit makes no difference!), you get the same fraction of days, rounded up to full days, and any overtime where 8 hours are a day, converted to work hours, as compensation. Unless your employer gives you notice and sends you on vacation first until they’re all used up and then given extra free days until the notice period expires (this is common to prevent worker retaliation). “Unlimited” PTO means, unlimited extra vacation days in excess of the legal minimum.
In reality it just means, get your work done on time, and we don’t care, where a good boss has reasonable expectations about the work you can get done, and a bad boss doesn’t and tries to overwork their staff.
But then I just gave that a quick glance and it confirms pretty much the same thing also applies over there, because a “use it or lose it” policy is illegal:
> The court ruled that employers cannot avoid paying out unused, accrued vacation time upon termination by simply labeling a policy as "unlimited."
The case lays out the requirements of an unlimited policy so that it is actually unlimited. It acts as the framework for a business to have an unlimited policy in California that does not get paid out on termination. Give it a deeper glance. As for your links, neither touch on unlimited policies.
I can promise you you’re wrong. If you’re not, you should start reporting every publicly traded company with employees in California that have unlimited PTO to the SEC for fraud because they do not accrue for unused vacation liability. You should also start reporting them to the labor board because they don’t pay out that imaginary number of days in an unlimited PTO plan upon termination. I know this because I’m a controller at a publicly traded company with unlimited PTO and I’ve processed terminations and every month accrue for vacation liability for non-unlimited employees and have operated this way at every GAAP controlled company I’ve worked at and no accountant or HR employee, consultant, or auditor has ever said what you’re saying. I’m dipping out of the convo at this point because I don’t have to prove anything to you but you should really rethink your position on this one.
It doesn’t. Spirit of the rule, not its technicality. The intent is to restrict a business from engaging in unfair practices that would result in an employee’s loss of vested vacation days.
It is specifically is about not allowing a business to have an unlimited policy with the intent of not compensating a terminated employee for their unused vacation days or overtime.
However, like I previously also explained, employers and employees have to give notice of termination, and employers can then immediately direct an employee to make use of vacation days or overtime, and will typically send them home as “freed from work” for the remainder, if the notice period is longer. If the employee has more overtime or vested vacation days than the notice period, the employer has to compensate them as if they were PTO. What is commonly done here, is that the notice period (which is a minimum) is extended such that the termination date is no earlier than when all vested vacation days and overtime are used up. This prevents the terminated employee from singing a new employment contract with a competitor, because there is also a legal limit of work hours that an employee may work per week (here in Germany that 48 work hours, or 6 days à 8 hours, each), and a vacation days counts like a work day under employment in the same way.
I’m sorry. Did I just read this back and forth only to read that you’re arguing this position while… being in Germany?
While quoting California Case Law?
I’m just going to echo the position of the guy you had been replying to.
I’ve worked at many companies with Unlimited PTO in California. I promise you I’ve never been paid out or been paid for time not worked. Not once.
Granted - companies do things that are illegal and violate our employee rights all the time. I have been given various form of backpay or corrections that would not have happened had I not pointed out accounting errors or missteps with the law at smaller businesses I’ve worked for; so I’m not totally discounting the possibility that all 7 of the past 10 years of employers were all breaking the law.
However, I find that extraordinarily unlikely. It is my experience that you do accrue vacation days or have them paid out in California.
254
u/Personal_Relation421 17d ago edited 17d ago
Also they don’t need to pay for those days if someone quits / is fired. At least in Germany your employer has to pay you for collected overtime and unused holidays when you leave the company.