Employers and unions reject the option proposed by Health that workers can decide their own sick leave during the first three days of a minor illness. An emergency solution to prevent primary care from being saturated. The social agents are opposed both for fundamental reasons, questioning the measure, and also, and especially, for the form, because the Government launches announcements without prior contact with the social agents. A complaint that has already been repeated on more occasions.
On the part of the employers, the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, criticized that the Ministry of Health has launched a headline without contacting either the communities or the social agents, and reiterated that what could be done is ask for the collaboration of mutual and private healthcare in specific situations, as was already done during the pandemic. “The normal thing is that any worker has the right to a toilet, to a doctor who cares for him. The first thing to think about is the people,” said Garamendi, also insisting on the risk that this initiative encourages absenteeism. He stated that companies have the right to control because absenteeism is skyrocketing and has a cost to the economy.
Foment del Treball has also opposed this measure. The Catalan employers’ association went ahead and already stated in a statement on Monday that “the granting of sick leave without a medical check-up of the affected person does not have any type of legal coverage and represents a lack of guarantees for workers who do not receive medical care.” necessary, and for companies, which should assume certain fraudulent assumptions.”
For his part, the general secretary of UGT, Pepe Álvarez, described it as irresponsible to announce this initiative without clear explanations about it. He considered that the way in which the issue has been raised creates uncertainty. “How does this work? What is going to happen? Of course, generating this uncertainty seems a certain irresponsibility to me,” said Álvarez.
His position is in line with his union’s statement, which reminds us that it is a sensitive issue, that it must be consulted with social agents and that applying it would be complicated in a system designed to operate from an initial medical consultation.
In a similar vein, from CC.OO. They also complained about not being consulted and recalled that the fundamental thing is not so much to speed up self-discharges, but to speed up health care for people who are sick.