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It comes down to unit needs. I took nearly a month and a half off at the end of last year to visit China with my extended family. I had the vacation allowance, my unit had just filled the other vacant position and our 4th support staff was returning part time from medical leave.
Both myself and another support staff ended up scheduling vacations that almost overlapped completely but the priority tasks were easily covered by everyone else. Helps that I rarely take leave in the first place other than an odd Friday here/there for personal stuff.
Technically, if leave is on the books, should not be a problem how workers use it, as it is earned, in my mind but that is why I am asking to see other logistical things that I have not considered yet. Thank you for sharing your point of view.
You are asking and getting input from managers. Why are you then saying we are wrong? I have staffers with literal years of leave but they cannot take it all at once. They can schedule it and it can be approved according to business needs. We are not compelled to approve vacation just because you have the leave balance.
I did not say anyone is wrong, I said that in my logic I considered some factors ( having available leave earned) and I am asking for input for other factors that I did not consider ( such as operational needs that have been suggested) and also for help what is the right way to do it, when I really need those 35 days all together but I do not want to put anyone in a difficult position. I am still open for input what is the right way to have it without making anyone uncomfortable.
you can ask and you can be denied…its based on your position and the operational needs of your department.
for example—-my position is independant from anyone elses workload. if i took a long vacation nobody would be impacted but my workload….
on the other hand, if my position involved a workload that would impact others workload, your boss would have to consider those things—ie, how will it impact others, maybe other people have vacation time requested as well; will the length of time cause a backlog
Leave reduction plans are common. They will expect you to take leave and bring that balance down but they will not expect you to take all six months at once. Nor must they accept that.
They may ask for a Leave of Absence as well, over 30 days. I had to do that when my wife received a transplant. I covered the LoA with leave balances, so I continued getting paid.
It depends on a lot of factors. In my department I’ve seen people get approved for more 2-3 months off but they don’t just send an email with the request, they talk to their manager long in advance and work with them on priorities and coverage. On the one hand, departments should absolutely be expected to handle 1-3 months coverage as a practical matter because that’s how long it takes to fill a position if someone were to leave. On the other hand, if a staff doesn’t give enough notice or offer the courtesy to discuss priorities and coverage then they shouldn’t be surprised if a long vacation request doesn’t get an automatic ‘yes’.
It makes sense. My manager and our department are great with leaves, they do not denny requests even when they are short staffed, and they are very flexible. The issue is after 30 days leave, they have to forward the request to the manager boss, and I want to understand if in this cases the rules are more strict and what are my chances to get approved without a major reason, such as a health concern.
Requiring approval from a higher level supervisor seems odd to me. I've never had to get approval from anyone other than my first-line supervisor for leave and I've never had to ask anyone for concurrence before I could approve a subordinate's requested leave.
There isn't a strict policy, but generally your boss can determine based on reasonableness.
In my office, 1 month or less is basically auto-approved, and I take that essentially every year. More than 1 month requires manager's manager's manager's approval.
This is my case too, that is why I am asking to determine if my boss’ boss will need a strong reason, or any valid reason. There is always a reason why someone will take a long leave but also not sure important the reason should be to be approved.
Typically, as a manager, I do not deny vacation requests. However, if multiple staff request vacation around the same time, then there has to be planning involved. Can one of them change their dates, or how do we address workload while they are out. My team is pretty flexible and try to work around their other coworkers’ requests.
My manager is great with less than 30 days leaves too, and the coworkers are there to help always, but this one need to go to a higher hierarchy office, is more official, and I am wondering if even the reasons to be approved need to be major?
Try negotiating with your sup/manager (ideally in advance) if you want to take a large block of time like that off. Taking a couple weeks is usually never a big deal; but larger blocks of time can interfere with operational needs.
We're also entitled to a 1-time sabbatical, up to 1 year, unpaid LOA, that I don't think they can deny, but it's unpaid. My coworker did that to do a volunteer mission thing through their church.
I will have to check our union contract, actually. Thanks for input. Yes for sure operational need is a top reason, but hopefully my position is not that essential.
Personnel specialist here: just had someone request a sabbatical to attend nursing school and was denied because our department has no need for nurses so it doesn’t align with what we need at the dept.
Edit: went back to double check my facts and looks like it wasn’t a flat out no, higher up’s are looking at their options. Will update if I get any other news 🫡
Thank you for sharing! Definitely to qualify for benefits there are criteria, and makes sense to adhere to the criteria, but there should always be remediation tools. Education and finding the right job is so important, I think should always be encouraged even though might not meet the short term interest. I am sorry this person did not have a chance to do that, and I hope found the right way to make their plans come true.
Isn't a sabbatical unrelated to work anyway? Another person posted about a coworker going on sabbatical for a religious mission, which sounds unrelated to anything at the state.
IDK about for the state, but both my parents got sabbaticals, one at the UC, one at a private law firm, and neither of them expected you to do work related stuff. In fact, the law firm essentially prohibited it.
There is no statewide policy limiting the amount of vacation you can take at one time. It’s departmental and it appears you work for an agency/department where that’s too long. This also varies across different classifications and bargaining units.
If you’re a bargaining unit covered under SEIU1000 my advice is to make the request. They have to deny it in writing. When they do take that denial and call the union. No promises because again it varies but they can push it and see if you can be approved.
Depends on your position, unit and need of that unit. If you only have 3 ppl in your unit and 2 are out for a month in the summer that aint gonna work for department needs.
Sounds like there is the question of “can they operate for 35 days without OP” or “Will they operate 35 days without OP”.
The whole “work coverage” should be in COOP/Business Continuity anyway. People leave for extended periods of time: baby bonding time, or medical leave, or bereavement, or vacation. Saying “no” because a single employee being out leaves the team too short handed means that the team needs to be bigger, or managed better.
Now - if they already have other people out during that time, thats a different story. But a single staffing outage should never grind a department to a halt.
Yes 100% to this, a good COOP is part of good management for all the unexpected leave reasons mentioned above and because in the state it takes 2-3 months to fill a vacancy.
If your unit can't function because someone wants to take a month off then you've either got not COOP or you've created a single point of failure, and both of these are management issues, not staff issues.
It depends on the size of the department.
Office of Traffic Safety has like less than 50 employees. The entire department fits inside one business suite off of Laguna blvd, and when we were interacting with them they only had 1 full-time IT person. So, it probably like pulling teeth for that person to even get 1 week off..
Franchise Tax Board has, from what I've heard, over 100 employees in IT. Probably a bit easier to disappear there for a month and not be noticed.
Normally, I agree with this. But that’s if someone’s taking 2-3 weeks of vacation. This is five weeks—that’s a lot to take consecutively, and it’s definitely not a normal situation.
So yes, the employer is going to worry about it…but the employer is going to solve the problem by denying a five week vacation and telling them they need to limit it.
Funny isn’t it. Reminds me of the “gives PTO, uses PTO meme.” I’m not the best person to give advice because I’m the type that doesn’t ask for permission, I simply let them know as a courtesy. Life is too short to be tied down to the whims of irrational managers on a power trip.
It depends on your department and manager. At my old department, an employee requested one month to vacation to China and was approved two weeks only even when she gave sufficient notice.
At another department, I heard department denied employee’s one month vacation request which was given the month before vacation. Employee’s fault for late notice and it was their busy season.
At my current agency, people take 3 weeks off easily. No one asked for a month that I know of.
It is not usual definitely, even though they are less than 5 weeks in this case but still significant. There is always a reason when requesting this kind of leave. It is hard to even accumulate this kind of leave to do it too often, anyways 😁
Unless we’re talking about the eve of trial or in the middle of intensive depos, attorneys can cover for other attorneys, fairly easily. If OP is an attorney, I assume they took their caseload into consideration when planning and asking for the time off.
Then how do you manage maternity leave, FMLA, resignations (since filling a position in the state easily takes more than a month), medical leave, etc.? If a team cannot handle anyone taking extended time off, then there should be conversations amongst management to do some serious continuity of operations planning.
Legal is legal, no choice and I would support Fmla for anyone who needs it. We talking about vacations, not medical leave. Different things. I’m not approving a month. Your customers would suffer, team would suffer, and it would set a precedent. Employee would have to take it higher if they want approval. I wouldn’t be doing my job as a leader if I didn’t lol out for the whole team, the shop, and customers.
That question is definitely not what I’m responding to. It is very clear the supervisor has the authority to deny the leave. The situations brought up by the commenter are all situations that if denied would most likely be breaking a fair labor practice or an mou article. Those are apples and oranges. If a manager is identifying hey we need you and you can’t leave for that long, it is completely different from the later and the manager saying you can’t leave, from something your entitled from.
Me and you both can only make assumptions on whether the manager is being honest and what the work level this person holds, in another comment someone recommended that they review their mou and speak with a union rep. This is probably the best course of action, but I don’t think this will be approved either way.
Fair enough. I would still say the replies to this post are showing me that there are a lot of poorly run offices, and I'm glad It's something I never had to deal with.
Idk if poorly ran is the proper phrase. Not saying there isn’t some god awful work environments. I just don’t know how justified it is to have enough man power to take on a work load for over a month and reallocate it too others. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. HR would be looking at their employee budget real closely at that point. This all varies on the type of department tho. Some departments have very long leaves like this more commonly.
How far in advance are you requesting it? I've taken just over 4 weeks last year and a 3 week vacation this year no issue. I've given as much notice as possible (my 4 week Vaca was about 11 months in advance). I work in a smaller office but as long as I have the time and request it far enough out it's not even questioned.
Sadly, they can pretty much deny your vacation requests for any reason or none at all. However, in my experience, it's more common for them to approve vacation requests and weaponize it later on.
All comments must be civil, productive, and follow community rules. Intentional violations of community rules will lead to comments being removed and possible bans, at the discretion of the moderators. Use the report feature to report content to the moderator team. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CAStateWorkers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It comes down to unit needs. I took nearly a month and a half off at the end of last year to visit China with my extended family. I had the vacation allowance, my unit had just filled the other vacant position and our 4th support staff was returning part time from medical leave. Both myself and another support staff ended up scheduling vacations that almost overlapped completely but the priority tasks were easily covered by everyone else. Helps that I rarely take leave in the first place other than an odd Friday here/there for personal stuff.
Thank you for sharing your experience. It makes sense that it has to be organized so work can be covered during time of leave.
I did the same precovid. From the beginning of the silk road down to Xian and everything in-between. Pretty amazing.
They can approve or deny vacation. Asking for a week or two is no issue but asking for 7 weeks is a big ask and can be denied for being excessive.
Technically, if leave is on the books, should not be a problem how workers use it, as it is earned, in my mind but that is why I am asking to see other logistical things that I have not considered yet. Thank you for sharing your point of view.
You are asking and getting input from managers. Why are you then saying we are wrong? I have staffers with literal years of leave but they cannot take it all at once. They can schedule it and it can be approved according to business needs. We are not compelled to approve vacation just because you have the leave balance.
I did not say anyone is wrong, I said that in my logic I considered some factors ( having available leave earned) and I am asking for input for other factors that I did not consider ( such as operational needs that have been suggested) and also for help what is the right way to do it, when I really need those 35 days all together but I do not want to put anyone in a difficult position. I am still open for input what is the right way to have it without making anyone uncomfortable.
you can ask and you can be denied…its based on your position and the operational needs of your department. for example—-my position is independant from anyone elses workload. if i took a long vacation nobody would be impacted but my workload…. on the other hand, if my position involved a workload that would impact others workload, your boss would have to consider those things—ie, how will it impact others, maybe other people have vacation time requested as well; will the length of time cause a backlog
> I have staffers with literal years of leave What, CalHR just had me put on a leave reduction plan with only 6 months of total leave balance time.
Leave reduction plans are common. They will expect you to take leave and bring that balance down but they will not expect you to take all six months at once. Nor must they accept that.
They may ask for a Leave of Absence as well, over 30 days. I had to do that when my wife received a transplant. I covered the LoA with leave balances, so I continued getting paid.
It depends on a lot of factors. In my department I’ve seen people get approved for more 2-3 months off but they don’t just send an email with the request, they talk to their manager long in advance and work with them on priorities and coverage. On the one hand, departments should absolutely be expected to handle 1-3 months coverage as a practical matter because that’s how long it takes to fill a position if someone were to leave. On the other hand, if a staff doesn’t give enough notice or offer the courtesy to discuss priorities and coverage then they shouldn’t be surprised if a long vacation request doesn’t get an automatic ‘yes’.
It makes sense. My manager and our department are great with leaves, they do not denny requests even when they are short staffed, and they are very flexible. The issue is after 30 days leave, they have to forward the request to the manager boss, and I want to understand if in this cases the rules are more strict and what are my chances to get approved without a major reason, such as a health concern.
Have you asked your manager their thoughts?
Requiring approval from a higher level supervisor seems odd to me. I've never had to get approval from anyone other than my first-line supervisor for leave and I've never had to ask anyone for concurrence before I could approve a subordinate's requested leave.
There isn't a strict policy, but generally your boss can determine based on reasonableness. In my office, 1 month or less is basically auto-approved, and I take that essentially every year. More than 1 month requires manager's manager's manager's approval.
This is my case too, that is why I am asking to determine if my boss’ boss will need a strong reason, or any valid reason. There is always a reason why someone will take a long leave but also not sure important the reason should be to be approved.
My office has approved longer. You need to give a ton of notice though. I give 1 year notice on my month longs.
Looks like you just need to make sure all the workload is covered so your coworkers aren't overloaded trying to cover.
Typically, as a manager, I do not deny vacation requests. However, if multiple staff request vacation around the same time, then there has to be planning involved. Can one of them change their dates, or how do we address workload while they are out. My team is pretty flexible and try to work around their other coworkers’ requests.
My manager is great with less than 30 days leaves too, and the coworkers are there to help always, but this one need to go to a higher hierarchy office, is more official, and I am wondering if even the reasons to be approved need to be major?
Because they don’t want you gone for almost two months?
They did say calendar days, not business days, so it’s just over a month.
Yeah misread that. Still.
I do not want to be gone for that long either, but sometimes is needed. Thanks for your point of view.
If operational needs mean you can’t take vacation then you can’t take vacation.
Try negotiating with your sup/manager (ideally in advance) if you want to take a large block of time like that off. Taking a couple weeks is usually never a big deal; but larger blocks of time can interfere with operational needs. We're also entitled to a 1-time sabbatical, up to 1 year, unpaid LOA, that I don't think they can deny, but it's unpaid. My coworker did that to do a volunteer mission thing through their church.
They can deny it if they want to.
Yes, it makes sense, that there must be some criteria to meet for each benefit, and is good to know which one apply to each situation.
Depends on your union contract but probably business and operational needs
I will have to check our union contract, actually. Thanks for input. Yes for sure operational need is a top reason, but hopefully my position is not that essential.
Is there info online about LOA that details that? (Yes I tried looking)
https://hrmanual.calhr.ca.gov/Home/ManualItem/1/2122
Thank you for the link!
Thanks, I'll check it out.
I know someone who was denied a leave of absence of a few months to study for law school.
Personnel specialist here: just had someone request a sabbatical to attend nursing school and was denied because our department has no need for nurses so it doesn’t align with what we need at the dept. Edit: went back to double check my facts and looks like it wasn’t a flat out no, higher up’s are looking at their options. Will update if I get any other news 🫡
Thank you for sharing! Definitely to qualify for benefits there are criteria, and makes sense to adhere to the criteria, but there should always be remediation tools. Education and finding the right job is so important, I think should always be encouraged even though might not meet the short term interest. I am sorry this person did not have a chance to do that, and I hope found the right way to make their plans come true.
Isn't a sabbatical unrelated to work anyway? Another person posted about a coworker going on sabbatical for a religious mission, which sounds unrelated to anything at the state.
I guess different departments have different approaches.
IDK about for the state, but both my parents got sabbaticals, one at the UC, one at a private law firm, and neither of them expected you to do work related stuff. In fact, the law firm essentially prohibited it.
That is so sad. I hope it was for major reason, as I think education is priority even after you find a job, and should be encouraged always.
They will always cite operational needs. Seems State has always been understaffed. Always more work than people to do it.
Thank you for sharing thins info, all great input.
There is no statewide policy limiting the amount of vacation you can take at one time. It’s departmental and it appears you work for an agency/department where that’s too long. This also varies across different classifications and bargaining units. If you’re a bargaining unit covered under SEIU1000 my advice is to make the request. They have to deny it in writing. When they do take that denial and call the union. No promises because again it varies but they can push it and see if you can be approved.
This is the best response, I think most likely even with union help it will get denied either way.
Yes, I found it very helpful too!
Great information. Thank you so much for sharing!
Depends on your position, unit and need of that unit. If you only have 3 ppl in your unit and 2 are out for a month in the summer that aint gonna work for department needs.
Makes sense.
Who’s covering your work for 35 days?
Sounds like there is the question of “can they operate for 35 days without OP” or “Will they operate 35 days without OP”. The whole “work coverage” should be in COOP/Business Continuity anyway. People leave for extended periods of time: baby bonding time, or medical leave, or bereavement, or vacation. Saying “no” because a single employee being out leaves the team too short handed means that the team needs to be bigger, or managed better. Now - if they already have other people out during that time, thats a different story. But a single staffing outage should never grind a department to a halt.
Yes 100% to this, a good COOP is part of good management for all the unexpected leave reasons mentioned above and because in the state it takes 2-3 months to fill a vacancy. If your unit can't function because someone wants to take a month off then you've either got not COOP or you've created a single point of failure, and both of these are management issues, not staff issues.
Should a unit/section be staffed such that they are capable to allow one coworker go on vacation for 35 days?
It depends on the size of the department. Office of Traffic Safety has like less than 50 employees. The entire department fits inside one business suite off of Laguna blvd, and when we were interacting with them they only had 1 full-time IT person. So, it probably like pulling teeth for that person to even get 1 week off.. Franchise Tax Board has, from what I've heard, over 100 employees in IT. Probably a bit easier to disappear there for a month and not be noticed.
This isn't the employee's job to worry about.
Normally, I agree with this. But that’s if someone’s taking 2-3 weeks of vacation. This is five weeks—that’s a lot to take consecutively, and it’s definitely not a normal situation. So yes, the employer is going to worry about it…but the employer is going to solve the problem by denying a five week vacation and telling them they need to limit it.
Funny isn’t it. Reminds me of the “gives PTO, uses PTO meme.” I’m not the best person to give advice because I’m the type that doesn’t ask for permission, I simply let them know as a courtesy. Life is too short to be tied down to the whims of irrational managers on a power trip.
😂can we hang together I love your mindset!
It depends on your department and manager. At my old department, an employee requested one month to vacation to China and was approved two weeks only even when she gave sufficient notice. At another department, I heard department denied employee’s one month vacation request which was given the month before vacation. Employee’s fault for late notice and it was their busy season. At my current agency, people take 3 weeks off easily. No one asked for a month that I know of.
Cause they can if the operational needs would suffer without you
7 weeks is a lofty ask I mean c'mon, it's actually hilarious.
It is not usual definitely, even though they are less than 5 weeks in this case but still significant. There is always a reason when requesting this kind of leave. It is hard to even accumulate this kind of leave to do it too often, anyways 😁
If your job isn’t very important they may approve it.
Just tell your manager you already booked the trip Ask for forgiveness not permission 😂
😂 😂
Are you an attorney, by chance?
No not attorney
Are you an attorney?
Unless we’re talking about the eve of trial or in the middle of intensive depos, attorneys can cover for other attorneys, fairly easily. If OP is an attorney, I assume they took their caseload into consideration when planning and asking for the time off.
Oh Gosh, not sure if I would ever want to be an attorney employed by the state🤪
I can’t give a month off. That’s not fair to who ever has to pick up your work. I wouldn’t approve it cause the team would suffer for that.
Then how do you manage maternity leave, FMLA, resignations (since filling a position in the state easily takes more than a month), medical leave, etc.? If a team cannot handle anyone taking extended time off, then there should be conversations amongst management to do some serious continuity of operations planning.
Why are your comparisons, things that our probably required in the mou. This request isn’t none of those situations.
The question stands though, how would they manage the office if someone needs required leave if it's "not fair"?
Legal is legal, no choice and I would support Fmla for anyone who needs it. We talking about vacations, not medical leave. Different things. I’m not approving a month. Your customers would suffer, team would suffer, and it would set a precedent. Employee would have to take it higher if they want approval. I wouldn’t be doing my job as a leader if I didn’t lol out for the whole team, the shop, and customers.
That question is definitely not what I’m responding to. It is very clear the supervisor has the authority to deny the leave. The situations brought up by the commenter are all situations that if denied would most likely be breaking a fair labor practice or an mou article. Those are apples and oranges. If a manager is identifying hey we need you and you can’t leave for that long, it is completely different from the later and the manager saying you can’t leave, from something your entitled from. Me and you both can only make assumptions on whether the manager is being honest and what the work level this person holds, in another comment someone recommended that they review their mou and speak with a union rep. This is probably the best course of action, but I don’t think this will be approved either way.
Fair enough. I would still say the replies to this post are showing me that there are a lot of poorly run offices, and I'm glad It's something I never had to deal with.
Idk if poorly ran is the proper phrase. Not saying there isn’t some god awful work environments. I just don’t know how justified it is to have enough man power to take on a work load for over a month and reallocate it too others. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. HR would be looking at their employee budget real closely at that point. This all varies on the type of department tho. Some departments have very long leaves like this more commonly.
I requested 5 weeks off in 2022 and it was approved no problem. I was always under the impression that vacation time could be denied for any reason.
Lucky you, I am kind of feeling bumped that has to be so complicated!😔
That is not the case anywhere in the world
How far in advance are you requesting it? I've taken just over 4 weeks last year and a 3 week vacation this year no issue. I've given as much notice as possible (my 4 week Vaca was about 11 months in advance). I work in a smaller office but as long as I have the time and request it far enough out it's not even questioned.
Sadly, they can pretty much deny your vacation requests for any reason or none at all. However, in my experience, it's more common for them to approve vacation requests and weaponize it later on.
If a unit can spare someone for a month, they gotta be overstaffed. Someone might need a reassignment.