Wage Law

We had an employee come to us recently to complain that, although she had been working full time at her current place of employment for almost two years, she had never received any paid vacation whatsoever. She was surprised when we told her that the "no paid vacation" policy was perfectly legal. Right now, there is no statutory requirement that private sector employees receive any paid vacation time whatsoever. Most first world nations do require paid vacations. Austria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg and Sweden require five full weeks of paid time off. The United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands require four weeks. Even many third world countries, including El Salvador and Indonesia require two weeks or more of paid time off for full time workers. The norm in the U.S. is, by contract, not by law, workers earn more paid time off the longer they've been with a company. The average for full time workers with just one year of seniority is less than two weeks. But those are just averages. A vacation policy of zero weeks, even after several years of employment, is not illegal.