Government provokes clashes between employees and employers {Info-Prim Neo analysis}

After testing the scandalous model of internal relations for a period, the current administration imposed the same models of relations on other spheres of the social life. În particular, starting with January 1, the government stimulates serious clashes of interest between the employees and the employers with the classical aim for such situations – where two fight the third one wins. The gain is significant, assessed at several hundred million lei a year. This would be one of the goals or at least the effects of the new legislative regulations under which the employees are to pay the first day of the sick leave by themselves, while the employer – the next three days. It may happen that there are also other declared and undeclared aims and interests, including political. [A conflict between the right to private life and the right to equity in business] For a number of years, the Ministry of Health has been sued for not respecting the people’s right to intimacy and private life. This is how the people represented in court by the NGO Institute for Human Rights (IDOM) assess the presence of diagnosis in the patient’s sickness certificate issued by the doctor. IDOM said that in accordance with the law on the rights and responsibilities of the patient, the diagnosis cannot be said to somebody else without the patient’s consent. “The sickness certificate, where the patient’s diagnosis is written, informs the employer, bookkeeper and the personnel service about the employee’s disease. This infringes the person’s right to intimacy. There are even very delicate cases,” considers the organization specialized in human rights. The Ministry of Health admits that the mentioned rights are violated and even took steps to solve the given problem. This is a guarantee that voluntarily or forced by the ECHR, the Ministry of Health will eliminate the information about the diagnosis from the current format of the medical certificate or will replace the certificate with another kind of mechanism, where the given information won’t exist {(see the article “Diagnosis indicated in sickness certificate infringes person’s intimacy, IDOM, that was published on January 2, 2012)}. At the same time, the current administration of Moldova forced the employers (who do not have the right to know the diagnosis so as not to infringe the employee’s right to intimacy and private life) to pay for three days of the sick leave – a kind of ‘white paper’ with which they have no connection. The doctors who issue sickness certificates are not subordinated to the employers from the other areas. The employers do not have powers and it is not within their area of activity to check the correctness and legality of granting sick leave to their employees. Instead, the employers are forced by law to suffer all the consequences without being asked and without knowing what they pay for. Furthermore, the government violated the principle of equity in promoting economic policies by imposing discriminatory conditions on the private businesses, in relation to the state ones, which will pay budgetary money to the employees working in the budgetary sector for sick leave. The employees who benefit from sick leave will also be punished without being guilty. It may happen that the employees do not have time or money to pay sickness benefit. This is possible in the conditions in which the Moldovan economic entities in 2012 will be more seriously affected by the crisis, taxes and fines than before. It is not excluded that serious tensions will appear between the two social categories to which we will refer below. But the government invented for employees a rather real punishment because the money paid by the employers as sickness benefit will be additionally taxed as a source of income. This means that at the end of the year the employer will have to pay an additional sum to the state as income tax. Earlier, the sick pays weren’t taxed. Schematically, things stand as follows: the Moldovan state refused to pay allowances for temporary incapacity for work to its people even if they consciously pay 6% of all the salary incomes in the form of taxes into the state social insurance budget managed by the state. Thus, the state is at the first stage when it wins money – from the employees. At the second stage, the state obliges the employers to pay the sickness benefit instead of it at a time when the employer pays 23% of the total salary funds of the company for these purposes. At the third stage, the state institutions have a political-moral gain because in case of nonpayment or postponement of the sickness benefits, the employees’ dissatisfaction is oriented towards employers, not authorities. Somebody thought that despite the tense situation in Moldova, only a drop of gas is needed... At the next stage, the state has again financial gains from levying the income tax even if it did not contribute to this income. There may be other stages at which the state will have gains from this confrontation of the interests of employees and employers. [Economic entities pushed towards bankruptcy and underground economy] The Government introduced an additional tax for the Moldovan economic entities, calling it allowance for temporary incapacity for work, obliging them to incur large costs that have nothing to do with the production process. It happened during the deep national and world economic crisis when the government imposed an additional financial burden on them by restoring the tax on non-reinvested income and increasing the fines for all kings of fiscal and social violations. This can result in bankruptcy or the decrease in the payment capacity of many companies and, respectively, the diminution in the number of workplaces, the retaining of the sickness benefit and the salaries, which ultimately affects large groups of employees. The employers will be tempted to directly fire or reduce the jobs occupied by the employees who become sick, not speaking about the lowering of the employment chances of the disabled, elderly persons and other groups of people. It is not excluded that a part of the employees will try to gain rights by suits or private and collective protests. The relations between the employee and employer and the social harmony will be thus seriously affected. The additional payments made by the economic entities will increase the cost price of production. What happens for example when the rise in the price of oil products, electric power and heat push up the cost price? The producers increase consumer prices in order to survive. The same will happen in our case – the consumer prices will increase one by one, mainly in the sectors of the national economy, where there is the largest number of employees who can become sick. These are now trade, services and agriculture and the rise in the consumer prices will affect the entire population, including the employees and employers forced to pay the sickness benefits instead of the state. It is expected that the small and medium-sized companies will be affected first of all. On the one hand, they have the largest number of employees in the national economy, while on the other hand they are in a more difficult situation compared with large, monopolist and state companies. (see news story “Expectations of small business employers not met”, which was published on January 6, 2012). Another as sad scenario pushes the economic entities towards the underground economy, which runs counter to the interests of the ordinary people and the country and the obligations assumed towards the development partners, also because the shaky taxation basis will diminish and the collections into the consolidated budget will decrease at a time when the given collections reached the lowest levels in the last few years. Not speaking about the disappearance of more people’s chances to receive sickness benefit and to look after one’s health and the health of the children and parents. [Bribe and corruption are increasing, while healthcare and equity are decreasing] The reasons for which the government obliged the employers to spend money on processes that are not related to the production process are unjustified. According to the Ministry of Labor, Social Protection and Family, these changes will lead to an increased responsibility of the employers towards work conditions of the salary earners and the reduction in the costs of paying sickness benefits” (see the news story “Employees will pay more for employees’ sick leaves”, which was published on December 7, 2011). For example, the employer of Info-Prim Neo News Agency, which has the legal status of limited liability company, does not have an additional electrical heater in his office for cases when it is cold and Termocom does not supply heat. However, in the employees’ office, the employer set up such a heater, which is the private property of the employer, not the company. The employer himself pays money for the electricity used for this purpose. Every employee benefits from a properly outfitted workplace. Why should the state oblige the employer and the employee to pay once again sickness benefits if the taxes paid by them are transferred to the state budget? The state should better assume responsibility for the functioning of the state institutions designed to supervise the observance of the work conditions at the level of economic entity. The state should also save the money used to pay sickness benefits. According to the Ministry of Labor, Social Protection and Family Conform, the payment of allowances for temporary incapacity for work from the state social insurance budget increased from 231 million lei in 2006 to 598 million lei in 2010. Costs of about 72 million lei from this budget are expected to be saved in 2012. But the savings may be higher. On the other hand, the government did not say it openly, but implied that rather high costs are incurred owing to the large number of false pay leaves. The state may obtain savings, but the money spent for these purposes by the employers may increase because the most real effect that the legislative amendments will have will be the rise in corruption and bribe in healthcare. Protected or unsupervised by the state, a part of the doctors are stimulated to issue illegal sick leaves as the inspection bodies follow only how the public money is used to pay sickness benefits, not how the private economic entities spend money for the purpose. It would be logical if the government solved the problem of saving money in the state social insurance budget by instituting non-simulated control over the procedure of issuing sick leaves. But this would demand political will and professional effort on the part of the authorities... [Valeriu Vasilica, Info-Prim Neo]