Text | Yoyo Mama public number | Yo-Yo Mom German Parenting
A few days ago, a reader left a message on WeChat asking me to write about the German vacation system. Open public number 7 years, although in the article sometimes mentioned the German vacation, but did not use an article to fully introduce, then today to talk about this topic.
How much leave do Germans take in a year? I once saw an article on the Internet saying that Germans are on vacation for half a year, whether it is true or not, I will give you an account today. German law stipulates that the statutory minimum annual leave of 20 days per year for employees who work 5 days a week is 20 days, while for those who work 6 days a week, it is 24 days. Of course, the vast majority of people in Germany work 5 days a week. Note that the number of days mentioned in this article refers to weekdays, not weekends. However, the vast majority of German companies and units will give employees 30 days of paid annual leave, far beyond the minimum requirements of the law, and only a few small private companies with low competitiveness will be harsh enough to give employees only 20 days. Data from 2019 shows that the average German has at least 28 days of paid annual leave. In addition to paid annual leave, Germany's statutory public holidays run around 11 days a year and are spread throughout the year. For major holidays such as Christmas and Easter, the legal holiday is only 2 days (Christmas is the two days of December 25th and 26th, and Christmas Eve on the 24th is not a legal holiday), but most people will take one to two weeks of their annual leave. And that's not all. Germans not only have annual leave and statutory public holidays, but the law also stipulates that they can take up to 6 weeks of paid sick leave per year. If the leave due to illness is within 6 weeks, the salary will be paid, and the cost will be borne by the employer. For more than 6 weeks, the costs will be borne by medical insurance and social security. The data shows that Germans took an average of 10.9 days of sick leave in 2019.
Interestingly, in Germany, paid annual leave is calculated separately from sick leave. If you fall ill while on vacation and can provide a doctor's certificate, the number of days you are sick will be counted as sick leave, not annual leave! There is a concept passed here: annual leave is for employees to relax and vacation, if you are sick during the period, can not achieve the purpose of relaxation, it can not be counted in the annual leave. Parents with children can also enjoy 10 days of paid sick leave per person per year, and when the child is sick, parents can take turns to take a total of 20 days of leave for childcare; if raising multiple children, the maximum is 25 days per person, and the parents add up to 50 days! In the case of a single-parent family, a person can enjoy the treatment of both parents, which means that there are 20 days of sick leave for paid children a year, up to a maximum of 50 days. After the start of the epidemic in 2020, because children often have to take online classes at home or are quarantined, paid children have more days of sick leave! Just checked, my family's TK Insurance Company (public) offers 30 days of sick leave for paid children per single parent a year; for multiple children, the maximum is 65 days! Similarly, single-parent families enjoy the treatment of two parents, doubling the number of days. Because it is the child who is sick, not the parent who is sick, the salary during the parent's leave is borne by public health insurance, not the employer. Now, let's use the average to calculate, a German with two children takes 30 days of annual leave, 11 days of statutory public holidays, 10 days of sick leave, takes 20 days of leave to accompany the children because of the illness of two children, plus 104 days of weekends, the German works for a year: 365-30-11-10-20-104 = 190 days Of the year, only 52% of the time is really working...
However, what should be said here is that even if you take frequent sick leave within the upper limit of the law, whether it is because you are sick or your child is sick, it will definitely have an impact on career development and you will not be able to take up management positions. Therefore, in general, at the age when their children are still young and frequently sick, many German mothers choose to work part-time, so that they have more time to take care of sick children and avoid frequent leave. Single mothers, forced by financial pressure, have no such choice, can only work full-time, and have to take frequent leave to take care of sick children, which leads to them only staying in basic positions and making it difficult to get promoted. So in Germany, single mothers are among the most vulnerable groups to falling into poverty.
How much leave does a German child take in a year? Speaking of German office workers, then german children. In order to take care of the parents' work needs during the kindergarten period, the kindergarten of Yoyo was only closed for 2 weeks a year at Christmas and summer vacation. So at that time, I didn't feel much about the holidays of German children. Since Yo-Yo went to elementary school, I have become more and more aware of how German students are on holiday all day?! Elementary school students have more holidays than kindergarten children! German schools have 12 weeks of vacation a year, 6 weeks of summer vacation, 2 weeks of winter vacation, 2 weeks of spring break, and 2 weeks of autumn break. On the national statutory public holidays, children of course also have holidays. The following picture is our school statutory holidays in North Rhine-Westphalia this year, to give you a visual feel, the green is the school holiday, the red is the public holiday. You can see that every time it is just 2 months after the start of school, it will be a long holiday!
Most of the interest classes are also closed on the school's statutory holidays, and the business hours of the interest classes are synchronized with the school. If the interest class of a certain day happens to fall on the national statutory holiday, then the default automatic holiday, the money is not refundable! German interest classes are subscription-based, automatically debited from bank accounts every month, although 12 months of money are paid a year, but more than a quarter of the time is on holiday...
And that's not all, German schools have 3 to 4 days of motorized holidays at their disposal every year! General motorized holidays will be connected with statutory public holidays to form a small long holiday. For example, if the statutory public holiday is on Thursday, then the school is also closed on Friday, so that a small four-day holiday can be formed; or if the public holiday is on Tuesday, the school can choose to take a holiday on Monday. The Germans call this motorized holiday Brückentag (bridge day) – used like a bridge to connect public holidays and weekends. The exact day of use is at the discretion of the school. Cologne's carnival carnival every February is a traditional festival in the region, but it is not a national holiday. Our school uses 2 days of motorized holidays every year to form a small holiday from Friday to Monday during the carnival for the children to enjoy. It is worth mentioning that the school holidays in German states are different, and the staggered peak holidays can avoid everyone from vacationing at the same time to a certain extent. The order of holidays in each state is also not fixed, and it rotates every year. The chart below shows the holiday schedule of each state this year, and we can see that the earliest holiday this summer holiday is in our state of North Rhine-Westphalia: June 27 to August 9, and the latest holiday is bayern: August 1 to September 12.
Germans plan to take a look at the holiday schedules of each state before planning to travel on holidays, don't travel on the first day of the holiday, the highway can also be blocked with dragons... You can take advantage of the holidays of your own state school to play in a state that has not yet taken a holiday.
German students have so many leavers, what about parents? German law makes it mandatory to go to school, and parents cannot take time off to take their children on trips. To travel, you can only wait until the statutory school holidays. Therefore, since Yo-Yo went to school, we feel less free to walk away like in kindergarten to take care of the needs of our parents' work, and the custodial services provided in schools today generally cover most of the holidays, including motorized holidays, and the custody of Yo-Yo School is also open. Summer vacation provides 3 weeks of hosting, winter vacation one week, spring break and autumn break as long as it is not a national public holiday, custody is also open. Most German parents take their children on annual leave, as little as one week to 3 weeks. The rest of the time can be sent to the custody, summer/autumn/winter camp, and grandparents' homes. This summer we don't plan to send Yo-Yo to custody, mainly because we don't have time
Two weeks before the summer vacation we planned to go on vacation to France, the third week I planned to let Yo-Yo concentrate on learning Chinese and Olympiad at home, and the last three weeks to send her to her grandparents' house to enjoy the German countryside life.
Well, today I will share this, everyone has questions and leave a message with me! Yesterday's article sold Guanzi said that today's good news, I am not ready, plan to announce tomorrow! Please be patient and wait
Yo-Yo Mama in Germany on May 5, 2022
Author: Yo-Yo Mom, studying in the Netherlands to meet love, studying in Saudi Arabia to feel the exotic style, working in Ireland alone through pregnancy, raising two mixed-race female dolls in Germany, sister "Yo-Yo" 7 years old, sister "Ranran" 10 months, Father Marx is a German sociologist with a delicate appearance and a delicate heart. Share the interesting life and cultural collision of Chinese and Western families, and gain insight into German education. His masterpiece "Learning Parenting with German Mothers".