What does "Canadian business attitude" mean?
Are you referring to attitude of Canadians toward businesses or their attitude as a Canadian corporation?
Probably a by-product of our colonial days that we've yet to cast off. Although immigration will solve it soon enough.
A very close friend of mine works for OPG (via a contractor).
OPG and his contractor both have agreed to give him 2 weeks paid time off, and ~ 1 week of sick time off.
However, taking time off ensures that you WILL get laid off (reasons would be made up ofc) during the next quarter.
This basically forces everyone to not take time off (and work during vacations - my friend worked full time during statutory holidays like Christmas and New Year).
When I tried to tell him this was very illegal, he basically said that he was lucky to have his job or he'd be unemployed so he does not mind this.
Now this might be an exception but I've heard and seen numerious stories such as these all over Ontario from various companies (from crappy ones like TCS to startups to small established business like Axiom and even some big multi-national companies - especially in the fintech world and banks).
That said, there are also a lot of companies (like the one I currently work for and the previous company I worked at) that try their best to make sure employees have a great time working there and do their best to achieve that.
> However, taking time off ensures that you WILL get laid off (reasons would be made up ofc) during the next quarter.
That's pretty bad though I wonder if it's actually illegal. In the USA most employment is "at will" so companies can fire you for anything or nothing. I'm not sure where taking vacation/sick days counts from a labor law perspective but I wouldn't be surprised if it was within the rights of the company to fire employees who use them.
> This basically forces everyone to not take time off (and work during vacations - my friend worked full time during statutory holidays like Christmas and New Year).
You see this a lot in the finance world as well. Nobody takes vacation during the year and piles it on at the end of the year when things are "change freezese". It's pretty silly.
> Now this might be an exception but I've heard and seen numerious stories such as these all over Ontario from various companies (from crappy ones like TCS to startups to small established business like Axiom and even some big multi-national companies - especially in the fintech world and banks).
> That said, there are also a lot of companies (like the one I currently work for and the previous company I worked at) that try their best to make sure employees have a great time working there and do their best to achieve that.
So how rampant is this though? If it's prevalent throughout Canada then it sounds like a symptom of a jobs gap. If most employers can be picky about picking employees who will skip vacations (again ignoring how stupid this sounds), then I'd argue there aren't many choices for employees to begin with.
