Working Breaks > Vacation

Vacation: Paid Free Time

Vacation is agreed absence from the workplace for the duration of at least one, often more work days. The remuneration is normally paid on during the period. In some cases, rarely today, an extra vacation money is paid.

An employees entitled to vacation can generally choose a period of time for continuous vacation. However, company necessities as company holidays or older rights of other employees can overrule that principle. If you do not use some of your vacation of one calendar year before March 1 of the next year, then it lapses.

Contracted paid vacation is for employees, that is “white-collar” and “blue-collar” workers and clerks, also part time workers. Self-employed workers can take vacation of course, but mostly without an income, for they cannot process any orders in that time.

German vacation act (Bundesurlaubsgesetz), enacted Jan 8 1963, provides for every worker working full time an annual minimum vacation of 24 business days (which is 20 work days). In part time work, vacation is less, in proportion. Collective agreements often exceed that regulated vacation, making the average vacation granted in Germany around 29 days. Severely disabled people are granted additional vacation of 5 days, according to SGB IX.

Vacation entitlement of public servants is regulated by public service collective agreements (TvöD), for clerks by the Erholungsurlaubsverordnung.

Unemployed are not legally entitled to any vacation. However, labour agency normally grant up to three weeks of vacation a year, given that there are no suitable free jobs or chances to be placed in that time.

The terms of vacation and vacation for convalescence are often used equal although they are different. In fact, there are 6 kinds of vacation:

• Vacation for convalescence
  meant for recreating and maintaining of the working ability
• Special vacation
  additional vacation for special reasons, e.g. marriage of one’s own, moving houses, or death of near relatives
• Parenting-vacation
  called parental leave since 2004. It is meant for the bringing up of the children and can be taken by mother or father. Today, 95 % of takers are women
• Educational vacation
  meant for occupational / professional education, standard 5 days per year, while different federal states of Germany have different regulations
• Maternity vacation, or maternity protection
  times of no employment allowed around pregnancy and birth
• Unpaid vacation
  in which employment is suspended

• In the first six months of a new employment, that is during the probation period, the employee is entitled 1/12 of the year’s vacation for each month. Example: when you have been in for 3 months a take your first vacation, you can take 6 days already!
• You are even entitled to vacation if you have been sick for the whole year, that is, have not worked a single day. Then you can take that vacation in the first three months of the following year
• Be careful with getting any employments, especially paid ones, during your convalescence vacation. They can be contrary to duty! Convalescence vacation is meant for restoration of your performance ability. So ask your boss in advance
• Announce your vacation early. Especially if you are planning to travel with children attending school, being bound to school holidays, and if you have to coordinate with colleagues
• If you are unemployed, you should never go on vacation without agreement with your labour agency case manager. If you do, you risk an interruption period in your unemployment benefit
• If you fall ill during some vacation, those days are not counted as vacation taken. Have your sickness certified by a doctor
• Do take your annual educational vacation, as far as it is accordable with your occupation
• In order to make the recreational effect that you get from vacation last long, you should consider the following:
• Take yourself one day at home before you start working again which you can use to do the basic things as laundry, correspondence and the like
• Have a good sleep
• Do not haste to make up for the work that has piled up
• Instead, first organize your email and mail, and your new tasks to do. Sort things by priority. Maybe one or the other thing has already been done or something can be delegated to someone else
• Schedule yourself

• Too Scared To Take a Vacation? Forbes.com, 05.26.09