Would You Buy Or Sell Your Vacation Days?

In many of my former workplaces, colleagues could donate their vacation, sick, and personal time to others in the office who were themselves ill or who had a serious illness in the family. It’s a program filled of cooperation and kindness. What if you could have more flexibility in your time off, but in a more cravenly capitalist way? This is already the case in 14% of American workplaces, where employees can “buy” additional vacation time if they want it or sell unwanted time back to the company. 

“It’s not much point in making the money if you can’t use it to do something really interesting,” one worker who bought extra vacation time to take a trip to Ireland told CBS New York. That’s true: why work hard if you can’t enjoy it?

Of course, having any paid time off in the first place is almost a privilege: in 2011, about 40% of workers didn’t get paid if they didn’t work.

Latest Workplace Trend: Employees Buying And Selling Vacation Days [CBS New York]