All employees of the City of Sacramento shall be entitled to vacation allowances on the following basis:
(a) During the first calendar year of employment, and after the completion of at least six (6) months of service, employees shall be entitled to a vacation allowance on a pro-rata basis of ten (10) working days per year for the number of months worked prior to the beginning of the first calendar year.
(b) Upon the completion of one calendar year and continuing thereafter through the fifth calendar year of employment, all employees shall be entitled to a vacation allowance of ten (10) working days per year.
(c) Upon the completion of five calendar years and continuing thereafter through the fifteenth calendar year of employment, all employees shall be entitled to a vacation allowance of fifteen (15) working days per year.
(d) Upon the completion of fifteen calendar years of employment and continuing thereafter, all employees shall be entitled to a vacational allowance of twenty (20) working days per year; provided further, that such employees so qualified to receive twenty (20) working days of yearly vacation allowance shall have the option, to be exercised not later than the first day of December in each year, to receive pro-rata payment for five (5) days of such vacation in lieu of using such five (5) days for vacation purposes.
For the purpose of this section, the first calendar year shall be considered to be the period between January 1 and December 31 next following the employee's original date of appointment. For the purpose of computing vacation time, each employee shall be considered to work not more than five (5) days each week. Vacation time shall not be earned when an employee is absent from duty without pay, except that there shall be no reduction in the yearly vacation allowance if such time absent from duty without pay does not exceed ten (10) days per year.
Upon termination of employment for any reason, after completion of at least six (6) months of service, an employee entitled to receive vacation allowance shall be paid in a lump sum for all unused accumulated vacation time. All vacation shall be taken at such time as the executive head of the department in which such officer or employee may be serving shall direct.
Any city employee in the Reserve Corps, Naval Reserve, Marine Corps, or National Guard of the United States Army and Navy, when called for the annual period of intensive training, shall be permitted to participate therein and shall not suffer loss of pay through such absence nor shall such period devoted to said training be construed as the annual vacation of such employee but said employee shall have in addition thereto, the usual vacation period or pay allotted to city employees.
The civil service board shall by rule define and interpret the terms of this section and such definition and interpretation shall be conclusive; shall by rule provide for the regulation and accumulation of vacations; shall by rule define those categories of temporary employment in which employees shall not be entitled to earn vacation allowance; and shall by rule provide for the method of computation of accumulated or unused vacation allowance for employees leaving city service.