Pauli Vahtera criticized the Engineer Association and Business Professionals for wanting to extend annual leave by a week by removing Saturdays from vacation days. According to him, in the private sector, annual leave accrued to 30 days including Saturdays, which effectively amounts to five weeks, while in the public sector, the majority of employees received 38 days of leave without Saturdays. Vahtera compared this to a two-month vacation if two sick days were included. Vahtera disputed the claims of union leaders that a longer vacation would reduce absenteeism. He wrote that in the public sector, there were more sick days than in the private sector, and absences totaled three months. According to him, absences increased the need for substitutes, and one in four employees was continuously absent in the public sector. Vahtera stated that he had written about public sector vacations for Iltalehti back in 2010 and estimated that standardizing vacations with the private sector would free up 40,000 employees from the public sector to alleviate labor shortages. #työelämä #lomat #yksityissektori (translated)