PTO or holidays should be given as hours, not days. If so, they can do the crucial work from home and use PTO/floating holidays for the remaining hours. If they don’t want to use up all their vacation, then they need to put in more hours. It doesn’t make sense for an employer paying decent wages to give yom tov, erev yom tov, Chol hamoed, Purim, tisha beav, erev shabbos, national holidays, sick days, and another week or 2 for vacation. If the employee needs vacation and takes off every possible Jewish off day they will probably have to make up hours on national holidays, working late, Sunday, at night, or whenever.
I meant PTO in terms of hours/partial days, but see how that wasn't clear from my post. But where is the line drawn when it comes to late arrivals/early departures? Most people only take PTO if they miss a large chunk of a day.
And no one is saying that the time won't need to be made up, but available work isn't unlimited, either.
What's needed is a happy medium of the employer's work getting done (crucial work on Chol Hamoed itself, and whatever overtime is needed afterwards to catch up) while also ensuring the employee doesn't have to use all their vacation time if there's not enough work.
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