Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire PTO vs Vacation

I work in an old, old fashioned (union, it doesn't matter here) factory.

We have a schedule where we accrue vacation and sick days.
There really isn't any difference except sick days can be lost if you
quit or don't use them. And vacation can be denied, a sick day can't.

But I hear everyone around me talk about PTO anymore.
It seems nobody gets old fashioned vacation.
And it's not given out at the beginning of the year, or on your hire date.
It's dribbled out.



What's the deal.

Since this seems to be from corporate America, in non union places,
one can logically assume it's corporate driven. And benefits the
companies.

But is it at a cost to employees?


The schedules vary on how it's accrued, I suppose,, but why this
huge shift. Current HR Buzzword BS? Or what.

The main difference, that really isn’t that different, is vacation and holiday is combined into the PTO and often sick leave goes into a separate account. Irregardless of where your accrued vacation, holiday and sick leave goes the difference as you touched on earlier is that PTO/vacation/holiday days are usually scheduled in advance and subject to approval while sick leave is, for obvious reasons, usually not planned and is therefore immediate, necessary and not subject to approval. I’m of course speaking in broad generalizations and individual collective bargaining agreements will supersede general corporate policy.

I like PTO. I like it much better than ‘vacation time’ and ‘sick time’. You earn a certain amount of PTO based on the amount of hours you are paid. And the accrual rate increases over time. Use it for when you want, and for what you want. And when you leave your employer, however much PTO you have left, you get it all.

Amazon has paid vacation time, Paid Time Off (PTO), Unpaid Time Off (UPT) and you can get medical leave easily enough. Amazon has pretty good benefits, really, but the job sucketh mightily, so you can get those benefits. PTO accrues (like vacation time) at a rate of about 1.3XXX hrs. per pay period. Vacation hours accrue year-round, PTO stops in mid-June, and UPT is just that, unpaid, but they will tire of that and let you go if you take off too much time, unless it's under Dr. orders.

My wife uses her vacation time mostly for hauling the grandkids to dr. visits, and stuff like that. PTO she uses when something comes up she can't plan for. PTO doesn't require approval from management, vacation DOES.

Amazon makes some of that stuff difficult and annoying. Amazon sucks, but the benefits are good.

I figured companies realized enough people lied about being sick to use that time as supplemental that they might as well combine them to remove the opportunity.

On a related note, the recent move toward unlimited PTO has nothing to do with benefiting the employee. It removes the liability of the accrued days from the corporate balance sheet.

Aces,
So, the 8-9 "normal vacation days get lumped into PTO?

No big deal if done fair, but I can see disappointment if one was
hired on and promised "up to 10 PTO days a year can be earned
your 1st year".

In my experience the vacation, holiday and sick leave one earns based on full time (~2080hr) employment is added up based upon the typical 40hr workweek and divided (I’m NOT mathman 😁) so you accrue it hourly.

I’m having a hard time explaining it but I’m sure my friend antlers can use his gift of explaining simple things in ways even I can understand and clear up my thoughts for me. 😁

The promise of “up to” means that the employee worked 40 hours a week and didn’t miss any work AND did NOT pick up OT. If you’re out of work 2 weeks total all year you weren’t accruing sick leave because you weren’t working. You typically don’t accrue PTO or sick leave when you aren’t working so the “up to” is literally up to the employee and assumes ideal circumstances.

Our PTO is accrued based upon hours ‘paid’, not worked. So when I’m out west climbing and hiking for two weeks and I’m being paid full time wages out of my PTO bank, I’m still ‘earning’ PTO. Pretty sweet. And the accrual rate increases with time. You start out with zero, and PTO is initially accrued at the rate of 6.77 hours per pay period, which is 80 hours.

I receive hours upon hours of pto. But I generally lose them because I dont have time to take it off. I generally squeeze in a week of vacation! Our pto is based on anything over 40 a week or call outs!

Our PTO was accrued hourly, you'd get about 8 hours of PTO every two weeks or 80 hours.

It could be used for a day off, longer vacations or as a sick day. We also had a separate pool of Extended Sick Leave or ESL, it was accrued a bit more slowly than PTO. If you were out sick one or two days it came out of your PTO. Once you were out sick for three or more days then all of that time would be taken out of your ESL, the caveat being that you had to have a note from a doctor or otherwise prove that you were legitimately out sick.

A couple of folks were involved in bad accidents and were out for a couple of months, they were able to use up all of their ESL before reducing their PTO. We could even donate some of our PTO to someone else if they had used up all of theirs.


Up until a few years ago you could accumulate PTO indefinitely, it wasn't uncommon for people to have 8, 10 or 12 weeks accrued leave time. But that is listed as an accounts payable liability on the ledger so they reduced it to 240 hours total. If you went over that you just didn't accrue any more hours, i.e. take your time off or lose it.

We really liked the whole setup, mostly due to the flexibility. I didn't take much vacation so when I retired last year got almost a full six weeks pay in one lump sum which made a nice little boost to the bank account.


Place I used to work at had an annual limit on PTO. You could only accrue a certain amount each calendar year. However, any PTO you didn't take was paid out in full in the first pay period of January, then you started accruing again for the next year.

Vacation is offensive to broke dicks

You’re correct, as usual. I recall not being penalized for vacation/PTO used and it was based on hours paid. Thanks amigo. 👍

GF is on a PTO program that sucks. ANY time off must be covered by that accrued PTO and they are stingey SOB's.

I get 5 weeks paid vacation, a week of earned time off by perfect attendance plus 2 weeks minimum off with no pay, but no penalty. Our program is loosly enforced.

When I brought up taking a month out west with the horses she immediatly said "That's just not gonna happen". My response was "You just need a new job."

I had vacation and sick days, Wifey has PTO days. They have 18 months to use them.

Our company used to have vacation and sick leave. Every year on January 1st it was replenished 4 weeks of vacation and 4 days of sick leave or 192 hours total. The full amount was yours to use immediately or if you happen to quit it was paid out in full (minus what you may have used of course). They was no accrual period. Now on the PTO system the company makes the full 192 hours available to you starting on January 1st but the reality is if you start using it immediately on January 1st you are essentially using borrowed time because you haven’t actually accrued the time off yet. If you quit before you accrue PTO equal to the time you’ve already taken off then you owe them money back which they withhold from your final paycheck. If you wait until mid-year to start taking time off then you’ve usually accrued enough to keep from going in the hole on borrowed time the rest of the year. If you happen to quit with more than 2 weeks of accrued time, they will only pay out up to a max of 2 weeks. Under they old vacation/sick leave system you could accrue up to 6 weeks that they would pay out if you quit. I think someone mentioned earlier, the PTO system is a way for companies to manage their cost liabilities. I would tend to agree based on the way the company I work for does it.

I get no sick time in principal but can't take more than 5 consecutive w/o being on short term disability.
It's all PTO. but only 5 PTO carry over is allowed and must be taken by Apr 1.

My coworker used to take vacation days when he was sick because sick time was accrued, he had chronic back problems.
He never knew when he would be out for 2-3 week with real problems. Can't do it any more.

Our facility awards vacation on a sliding scale, forty hours after one year up to 200 hours per year after twenty years. We are also awarded 120 hours per year sick time. Unused hours accrue and do not expire, except for sick leave. After a 500 hour balance of sick leave is achieved, 40 additional hours may be accrued each year.

I am presently sitting on 2000 hours of accrued vacation, and 1000 hours of accrued sick leave. As the majority of time, when an employee puts in for vacation, he is told "We can not afford to let you go right now," and vacation time is denied, the company has no choice but to carry the hours ahead as a liability.

Vacation hours will be cashed out in whole at retirement. Sick leave is not.

Competing employers in our area use PTO. They usually allow fifteen days per year, non accrued. Use it or lose it. Run out and take a day off, you are fired, unless that day off is legally protected by FMLA. But even then is is time off-no pay.

Company representatives are talking real hard about following along the lines of competitors' PTO policies. We employees are arguing hard against it. We know some employees are abusing their sick leave. And suggest those employees be investigated and terminated.

The problem is, we can not find employees to replace those who quit or are terminated. Not even with a $2000 hiring bonus.

Stepping on the benefits package will only make that issue worse.

Fortunately, my retirement date is coming up soon, and will happen before we get a new contract.

Yes to all of the above…

Sick pay was thrown out because of employees who suddenly called in that morning, “sick”….

You used your sick days or lost them,

Production suffers when people suddenly decide to play hookey on Fridays….

So rename it PTO, and employees can schedule their days off in advance.

First time I ever heard of it was a lady I was dating.
She was just out of college working for a huge mortgage company,
The kind of job that's darn near a sweatshop for college graduates
Who are ambitious and hard working. She worked 10 hour days and
took home work for weekends and evenings. All building pto.

But, she couldn't use it.
No one did her job when she was off, so she came back to a bigger
stack on her desk than normal. And in that environment, it's understood
that you won't take off. That's not what valuable team players do.
She was more diligent and tougher than most. Worked there several years.