EDIT: Should employees be allowed unpaid leave if their work is covered?

A lot of companies make you wait a year before earning vacation, and even after that it could be as little as 40 hours. Should people be entitled to vacation prior to that? Should they be allowed to take unpaid leave so long as their work can be made up/their shift can be covered?

I'm in the party that says if things can go as smoothly without you as they do with you, who gives a frick? I'm not talking taking advantage of it, I just mean live your life and take some time off and get away when you need it.

I know there are employers that post here, thoughts? I'm interested to see how many assholes are here, which I guess I already should know is a lot.

EDIT: This thread went sort of a different direction than intended. For those who saw my story in the thread (the reason for starting the thread), it should be noted that I work in a plant on shift work. Things can go as smoothly as possible without me because the guys on my shift are all trained the same and we all do the same job. We just need multiple people, because, well it's shift work. So the idea that I'm expendable is invalid.

I don't expect to get PAID vacation. I guess I worded the first title wrong. I would rather be entitled to a decent amount of unpaid leave so long as my shifts can be covered and without obviously taking off an excessive amount of time.

I don't get PAID leave until I've been with the company for 1 year and after that it's only 40 hours which basically equates to 3 days of paid leave per year. (12 hr shift x 3 = 36 hours, the remaining 4 irrelevant essentially).

And this vacation accrual is fairly typical among other plants I would imagine.

I just wanted to bitch and moan about my boss not seeing the bigger picture and trying to let his nuts hang, carry on guys.