New payment methods of sick leaves to be examined by Parliament

The Government has withdrawn from the Parliament the draft law amending the Law on allowance for temporary work incapacity and other social insurance services from July 2004, which stipulates new methods of paying employees’ sick leaves. The executive director of the National Confederation of Patronages, Adrian Axenti told Info-Prim Neo that the Government did not satisfy the request of the Patronages submitted to the Executive through the Tripartite Commission Government-Trade Unions-Patronages. Axenti said that, as far as he knows, the amendments related to the new method of paying the sick leaves will be examined by the Parliament together with other amendments to the Labor Code. The quoted source declared that he does not know the exact date when these amendments will be examined but he hopes that the MPs will be reasonable and will have a very serious attitude. Because only the Government is the social partner of Patronages, Axenti says that he does not have the possibility to “make lobby” in the Parliament but he hopes that after the Concept on the dialogue with the civil society will be approved, patronages will have access to the standing commissions of the Parliament where they will have the possibility to inform MPs about all the initiatives of the patronages. On June 26, 2006, the members of the Tripartite Commission disputed the legislative amendments which include new methods of paying the employees’ sick leave. They agreed on the fact that the Government should at first institute a control mechanism over the correctitude of offering sick leaves and only then to examine the method of paying the sick leave. Employers considered that these amendments conceal new taxes imposed to economic agents, fact that could determine them to hide a part of the incomes. The Patronages state that moving a part of the expenses from the social insurances budget to employers would be correct if the economic agents would benefit of reliefs for the Social Fund tax. The new methods of paying the sick leaves, approved recently by the Government include that the employers are not paying the first day of the sick leave and then paying the next 7 days of the leave. The authors of the initiative state that it aims at diminishing the death rate of the employees, because according to Government’s data the expenses of the Social Fund on the sick leaves increased by 40%.