Employers' organizations seek compensation for losses resulting from sick pays

The employers' organizations are demanding compensations from the government for the losses resulting from the legal provision that requires them to cover 3 days of sick leaves, Info-Prim Neo reports. The issue was discussed Tuesday at a meeting with Prime Minister Vlad Filat. “We agreed that other facilitations would be identified for the employers that in a way or another would compensate these expenses”, Leonid Cerescu, the president of the National Confederation of Employers' Organizations, revealed after the meeting. Commenting on the recent Constitutional Court's decision to scrap as unconstitutional the provision according to which the first day of the sick leave was not to be paid by either party, Leonid Cerescu praised it as a decision made to the benefit of the employee. However he noted that the employers still had to bear the expenses for the following three days of the sick leave. “We expressed our disagreement earlier as well, because these expenses give rise to additional losses”, lamented Cerescu. Earlier today the Constitutional Court found that leaving the first day of sick leave entirely unpaid was a violation of the employees' rights. The ruling was in response to an action brought by Ombudswoman Aurelia Grigoriu. Until July 2010, the sick leave was fully paid from the state social insurance funds. Last summer, Parliament adopted a legislative initiative put forward by the Government. Under it, the first day of the sick leave is paid by the employee, the second day by the employer and from the third day the allowance is paid from the budget. Since this January, the employers had to pay for three days of the employee’s sick leave instead of one. Thus, the sick pay was allocated from the state social insurance budget from the fifth day of the sick leave.