To save money, the government wants to review the system of waiting days in the private sector, when employees are on sick leave. But companies don’t want to foot the bill.
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On paper, not all employers are against tightening the conditions for reimbursement of sick leave. If there are more waiting days, they say that this would avoid some abuses and stoppages of convenience, a real headache for companies which have to manage schedules. But once this principle is established, the bosses fear that the idea of government, in reality, will cost them dearly.
Today, when they are on sick leave, private sector employees have three days of waiting. That is to say, they must wait until the fourth day for Social Security to start compensating them. To reduce expenses, the government is considering putting a fifth, sixth, or even seventh day of waiting. Betting that it wouldn’t change much for the majority of employees, since these waiting days are very often reimbursed by their employers, at least in large companies.
Employers are campaigning for days of “public order” deficiencies
But, inevitably, for companies, if tomorrow there are four, five, or six days of waiting to take care of rather than three, it will be an additional burden. And it is for this reason that employers are campaigning for what we call “public order” days. These days of lack of public order mean that days would be protected by law, that in fact no one, neither the State nor companies, could compensate them. De facto, this option would spare companies. Both Medef and CPME are campaigning for it to be retained. On the other hand, if this were the case, the employees would then be 100% losers.
Behind the scenes, the executive is working on this solution, because according to certain government sources, it has the advantage of restoring a form of equity with the public service. In fact, public employees only have one day of waiting time when they are on sick leave and this is never compensated. For the moment, these are only avenues, nothing has yet been decided, according to the government. It aims to save up to one billion euros out of the 16 billion that reimbursement of daily allowances to social security costs each year.