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Comment by zwieback | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if that's true. Our hourlies get benefits like health insurance, vacation, etc. Maybe not as good as salaried but it's not as clear cut as "hourly pay only."

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What does paid time off even look like if you don't have a set schedule, though? Will Uber drivers just get n hours of wage added to their paycheck every month?

I work for an organisation on a contract of as many hours as I want, and I just get paid pro-rata for days off. It’s effectively just extra pay.

Where I live the company has to set aside 12.5% of the salary paid for next years "vacation money". You can chose yourself when to withdraw this money in the following year.

For a full time job you are required to take 25 days (or 5 weeks) off work outside of public holidays which is about 10% of the total working time so you usually have a bit more to spend in this period even if the vacation itself is unpaid :)

Why not just pay them more? Seems like a convoluted way to structure a pay increase.

Because then you would have a bunch of people without money in the vacation month ;)

I'd be able to manage it personally but you will find that a lot of people wouldn't..

I find the idea of legislating how businesses operate based on the idea that people aren't expected to have personal responsibility highly distasteful.

I think the only country in the world where the general citizen have enough self control to manage this sort of stuff is Switzerland.

It might be distasteful to you but it is how people operate in real life and it would be sad if legislators ignored the real world in favour of how they wished the world to be.

I'm not following. You get your regular paychecks while you're on vacation. It's only once you've exceeded your allotted vacation days and go on leave without pay that you don't get paid. This is how things work here in the US too.

I don't think we have requirements about how exactly companies should fund this paid vacation in advance like France does (maybe we should?), but we do very much get paid while on vacation.

Because if you are not contracted to work a certain number of hours per week, you don't have a "regular paycheck"?

You do get paychecks issued regularly every two weeks (or whatever), it's just that the amount per paycheck is variable based on hours worked over the preceding 2 week period. This is common for much more than just Uber drivers (e.g. retail workers), and it still works out. The paid vacation amount is the average amount that employee earns.

That might create a pressure from employers where employees are expected to stay in their seats the whole year. The key is that employees are required to take the time off. That requirement means it's never possible to question it.

That makes sense for a full time employee. That does not make sense when there is no set schedule to begin with.

That's probably part of the equation too, i.e. that a majority of workers want a full time employment with a schedule so that they can take a few weeks off.

They want additional restrictions so that sometimes the restrictions are lifted? That doesn't make any sense at all.

In Ontario (at least pre-Ford) you can get full-time benefits as an hourly worker, as long as you work 40h a week or more (or maybe 35?). It's been awhile though so I'm not super confident on the details here.

The same is true (at least in my experience) in America. Over 40 hrs/week means the employer has to pay out extra benefits. This is also why employers do not want you to work over 39 hours if you're not salaried.

In the US, over 40 hours simply means 1.5x your regular payrate after the 40th hour, if you're "non exempt", i.e. hourly. Some employers might offer something more.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/overtime

If the company has more than 50 employees they are required to pay for healthcare if you work more than 30 hours a week [1].

https://www.employmentlawhandbook.com/federal-employment-and...

Which is why so many people are on 29/34/39 hour schedules.

Yeah, this is why, like so many other things involving regulation, there should be a gradual proportional phase-out, not a hard line in the sand. So rather than paying two people to do 20 hours each and pay for no benefits, if you did that, you'd be paying for half benefits for each, at which point you may as well just have one person doing 40 hours a week who's fully employed and getting full benefits like you should've been doing all along.

In America very few of those (except health insurance) are actually mandated by the government. Sadly in the US most employment benefits are only exchanged at the grace of the employer.

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