Except for the 13th month bonus, I’d say it’s pretty basic. You’d get those benefits working at a supermarket.

Five weeks vacation is a legal minimum. Most companies I worked for here in Denmark will give you six. It’s technically not five weeks, but 25 days.

I worked in Switzerland, the 13th month wasn't a bonus, they simply took your salary, divided that by 13, that was your monthly payment and you got 2 of them in December.

Also many bills are due on the first of January for the whole next year e.g. insurance. So it was kinda like a holiday and large bill windfall, but it wasn't additional to salary.

That was just one company, maybe other countries or employers are different.

This. You know your yearly salary (gross and net). Then you get it in different schemes depending on country and company. Some I now are:

- 14 payments (extras in June and December)

- 12+1 in December

- 12 + 2 x 0.5 (one extra in June and the other In December)

I believe dates were pick to match Xmas and Summer Holidays, two big spending anomalies

Anyhow you always negotiate yearly gross.

Not in the Netherlands. I always negotiated monthly gross. Then your 13th month and summer bonus suddenly actually feel like bonuses, even if the company includes it in the full yearly amount.

Even the '13th month' is standard, too, in Denmark, it is called 'vacation pay' and is accrued as a 12% added pay on top of your salary, but paid into a separate account, to be paid out when you go on vacation.

> Five weeks vacation is a legal minimum

No, it's not. It might be in some European countries, though.

I'm not European, but to a degree it seems so, yes. For example, minimum paid vacation by law is 21 days in almost all of Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b... And judging by common statements and anecdotes here on HN, I think the number of paid vacation days tend to exceed the legal minimum, especially in Western Europe, just as they do in the U.S.--typically 2 weeks for salaried employees even though Federal law mandates 0.

Likewise, mandatory pension contributions (employee and employer) in most of Western Europe exceed 20% of income (upwards of 30% in some cases), as contrasted to 12% in the U.S.: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/pension_glance-2017-... Who in the U.S. contributes 10-20% to their IRA or 401(k) on top of FICA payments? It's not even legal to make such large contributions pre-tax. (Some of us are privileged enough to make up the difference with higher salaries; a smaller fraction of a higher salary let's us contribute more to retirement.) Note that employer contributions aren't generally reflected in salary figures, and in some European countries employer contributions exceed 20%.

Benefits and regulations vary from country to country. I don't know details about eastern Europe, but all those are fairly common to different degrees in large parts of the continent.

It's mostly the same in Eastern Europe (Romania at least), with the exception of paid overtime (though technically legally required, it is often not enforced), and the 13th monthly salary only being common in some industries.

Not everything standard, but quite common. Varies per country I guess. I'm thinking Netherlands.