This relative claims the techs have the same work schedules as the teachers; that I would get summer, Christmas and spring breaks in addition to all the other school holidays.
So I'm eager to verify the time off claims as I would probably take the salary cut for the ability to take that much time off.
Speaking for Non-educational public service agencies, I would suggest that if it's about time off there are other considerations than being aligned with when the "kiddies" are off school. I have a friend that is a teacher in a year-round school system. Yes, he has lots of time off, and it occurs regularly about 3 times a year, for about a month each. Pretty cool. Not the schedule of Tech Support staff in his district though.
In my County Agency we are granted a specific amount of time off per year, that is essentially earned per pay-check, at a rate determined by years of service. Newbies get two weeks. After two years you earn 3 weeks per year, and after 10 years you earn 4 weeks. Geezers like myself with over 20 years get 5 weeks.
But here is the kicker. You can use this vacation time in whatever increment you want, and usually anytime during the year that you like, including tacking it in front of or on the end of exisiting holidays. We still get all the stock paid holidays per year.
For example, if I want to take off Thanksgiving week (I did) it only cost me (in theory) 24 hours of Vacation time (3 days) to take off 9 days in a row. Since many of us have negotiated 4x10 hour weeks, I actually was off 10 straight days for my 24 hours. So those Monday Holidays that make automatic 3-day weekends are already 4-day weekends for me because I generally don't do Fridays unless something really special is happening. If I want to make that a five day vacation, I just spend 8 hours of vacation to "extend" that extra long weekend from a Thursday night beginning to coming back to work Wed AM.
The moral of the story is that this type of modular, flexible vacation in a public sector environment where vacation requests are seldom denied gives the employee excellent bang for the buck. An employees perceived time off even at the 3 weeks per year earning rate can really feel like lots of vacation time off. And that doesn't count a completely separate bank of sick leave time that we also earn at a 2 weeks per year rate for the obvious purpose, that doesn't dent our vacations time.
Does the private sector have this kind of benefit?
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