minimum is up

[victor]

also it is not unknown here for wages to be unpaid -bosses pleading poverty-employees have to wait 3 months before they can lodge official complaints

one company here that sort of ceased trading 18 months ago -but still have some shops open (how???) ,employees from the shops that closed STILL waiting for unpaid wages.

Unions (such as they are) keep trying to get him declared bankrupt without any success

one of his sons still manages to race his rally car all over the place!

a small island mafia

[manxie]

All my working life of 50 years I never got even one day pay extra for free never mind an extra month in summer and a month at xmas.

Most of my work places also I worked a 6 day week, and in my early years worked from 7.30 am till 6 pm every day in that job, and I had to work a full year before I got a weeks paid holiday in the second year. then it increased by 1 day a year till two weeks paid was allowed, and no pay if off sick. needless to say I changed career before the year was up.

I never experienced Paternity leave either.

I only ever drew one week unemployment benefit in all that time too.

Hand up in later years through illness I was on incapacity benefit because I couldn't work but I couldn't have lived on that alone thankfully my wife worked so we were ok.

We also here (IOM) see civil servants getting top pay plus extras and only working a 35 hour week and lots of holidays with pay, and free perks like gyms etc.

The whole system is falling apart at present the rich are getting richer on the backs of the poor who are getting squeezed even tighter at the bottom of the pile and are expected to manage on a pittance.

Soapbox put away again for now.

Have a good day everyone

Manxie xx

[miasmum]

I have never known anyone get paid an extra months pay. What sort of company are we talking about?

[Diflower]

It's not a UK practice, although it may happen in some companies I guess.

In some countries it's been the norm - it's not actually a month's extra money, when you look at average pay, it's the annual salary split into 13 or 14 equal amounts - and I have worked in places that paid every 4 weeks, not monthly.

It's often places like car factories, which closed for 4 weeks each summer (or 2 weeks in some instances, just like most British factories used to do) and so all the workers had 4 weeks off at the same time - their only holiday. They would get paid that 13th amount at the start of those 4 weeks.

When I was talking to a German lady in Portugal years ago (1980s), she explained they were taking their annual 4-week holiday; 2 weeks in Portugal and the rest of the time visiting family at home. They couldn't choose the dates, the whole place closed down and the rest of the year they couldn't take any paid time off at all.
They were office workers but did both work for a car manufacturer; she said it was fairly common practice but i wouldn't know if it still is.

[JoM]

It's often places like car factories, which closed for 4 weeks each summer (or 2 weeks in some instances, just like most British factories used to do) and so all the workers had 4 weeks off at the same time - their only holiday. They would get paid that 13th amount at the start of those 4 weeks.

When I was talking to a German lady in Portugal years ago (1980s), she explained they were taking their annual 4-week holiday; 2 weeks in Portugal and the rest of the time visiting family at home. They couldn't choose the dates, the whole place closed down and the rest of the year they couldn't take any paid time off at all.
They were office workers but did both work for a car manufacturer; she said it was fairly common practice but i wouldn't know if it still is.

I think at one time most of the manufacturing companies around here closed down at set times, factory shut down it was always referred as. My Dad worked for the MoD and apart from Christmas and Easter I remember he always had the May bank holiday week off, the first two weeks of the Summer holiday and a week at the end of September - there was no way of having holiday at any other time. That was their allocation and that was it!

To a certain extent John's restricted that way. His company do a lot of work for car factories and some factories still shut down at certain times, the end of July/beginning of Aug being one of them, and that's the time when the work done in the office - the designs and planning - all comes together and has to be installed on site so for John and his colleagues, having time off then is out of the question because they may be needed to oversee installations, troubleshoot any problems, modify designs etc.