What are your thoughts?
14 replies (most recent on top)
I think it gets abused a lot and have seen ppl taking 7-8 weeks straight!!
Awful decision to allow permissive time-off. No standards across teams, sites, individuals and businesses. Creates a lot of tension in teams where individuals are clearly abusing the rules while others pick up the slack. Places no value on doing an honest days work anymore. This all adds up to a lot of lost productivity and massive cost. Also it quietly creates a little"class" system between those who can afford to travel the world on vacation and those that need to work to support their family. It is demoralizing when you work hard all year with only a little time off and listen to all the wonderful places others are visiting on their paid time off. (Particularly when those people are 1/2 your age)
I would suspect that they will end up laying off the ones who are here for too many hours, based on some twisted notion that they are inefficient because they take 45+ hours per week to do their job. Careful what you wish for, as the buddies always protect their own.
I am turning in an ombudsman complaint for the Greenville buddy system and excessive vacation among the salaried "buddies". Checking badge swipes is an excellent idea. Corporate would be shocked to see how bad these parasitic buddies take advantage of the buddy system while earning massive salaries. GE Greenville simply does not have enough work to support the current workforce on both the engineering and manufacturing groups.
before vacation was something you earned so many yeas = so many weeks
now everyone gets a trophy. it's not right.
Also, why does a new father need 6 weeks off?
I have to second the Greenville situation. I work in the GTTC and I feel like I am the only person dedicated to an actual full work load.
The buddy system is a cancer.
Good idea!! This applies to both engineering and manufacturing salaried employees in Greenville! Check badge swipes to see how many hours these people are actually onsite. Then divide their huge salary by onsite hours to see if they are truly worth their salary!!! Lol, brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t be fooled by the flexible work junk.
Greenville South Carolina is full workers taking over 10 weeks of vacation without recording anything. Management is OK with this because they are friends (buddy system). When they do show up for work they only work 1 or 2 hours per day as most of their time is spent socializing with their buddies. I challenge HR Greenville to at least compare badge scans with payroll. General Electric could save a lot of money if they get rid of these parasites!
I was in the old and new system before I left. I had 5 weeks under the old system, then went to permissive time off. I tried to stay within my 5 weeks, until people on my team with less than a year were taking 8-10 weeks and not even working a 40 hr. week. I gave my notice 3 months ago and it killed me to walk away from that vacation time that I feel was due to me, but with the extra money I'm making it softens it. I should have taken more vacation before I left, or even been on vacation on my new job in case I wanted to return, but it is what it is. Just hope I have my pension in 10 years
Next union contract the company will go for holidays, vacation time off and personal time. If we still have a job.
Even on my vacation days I come here to see if anyone replied. It only gets quieter on vacation. I can't stand the quiet anymore but I'm afraid to talk to anybody.
Everyone other than the 30-year veterans in my group take 12 weeks’ vacation minimum.
The recent college hire has been gone for 8 weeks straight. She uses GE corporate rates to travel the world. Who can blame her, it is a totally accepted routine now. Funny she only has about a year of service. As much as I like showing up to work whenever I feel like it. My dad tells me sooner or later reality of not being competitive will catch up.
Under the previous vacation policy, 30+ year GE folks could reach a level of six weeks vacation per year. The employee was entitled to that on Jan 1 of each new year. If you were laid off or retired during the year, you were entitled to be paid for any unused vacation. Many folks would retire on Jan 1 so as to be able to collect the full year's vacation pay. With all of the layoffs and early retirements that GE knew were coming, they started permissive time off and all this went away, saving GE millions of dollars. In addition, in the current environment of fear with forced retirements and layoffs, GE knew employees would be afraid to take time off, and the amount of vacation time actually taken would go down. Saving money was the real motivation, despite what S. P. told us about how it was really better for us.
Permissive time is terrible as for many of us it has resulted in no vacation or time off since if managers don’t give permission or business urgencies take priority then you get nothing even if you are working 18 hour days as a salary slave.
At lest with the prior policy that paid out time out years ago vacation was more protected.