Last year, the company where I was working didn't give us any time off for Christmas since it fell on a Saturday. We were supposed to be there for all of Christmas Eve, even though the co-owners of the company had mysteriously vanished on the 23rd (and didn't show up again until well after New Year's
). It would be understandable if it was a retail job, but us programmers didn't have any compelling need to be there. Around noon our boss said "This is BS, we're going home."
I don't believe that a private business owes their employees any time off at all. And if the owners want to take 2 weeks off for the holidays while stressing the importance of everyone being at work except on Christmas Day and New Year's Day, that's their right. But they aren't going to end up with very happy employees, and the ones with enough skill/motivation to find a better place to work will exercise their right to do so.
Another cute little trick that company pulled.. They'd give managers their own company car. Sounds great, huh? Well they'd take the cost of the car out of the person's pay, so the employee was basically paying for the car, while the company got to pay him less AND claim the tax writeoff for the car.
I'm glad I got the hell out of there.
