Patronages waiting for Government’s reaction regarding the contestation of the payment method of the sick leave

The National Confederation of Patronages (NCP) is waiting for a reaction from the Government regarding the contestation by the Tripartite Commission Government-Trade Unions-Patronages of the project aiming at amending the Law from July 2004 regarding the indemnities for temporary work incapacity and other social insurance services, which include new methods of paying the sick leave for employees. The president of NCP, Leonid Cerescu declared for Info-Prim Neo that the deputy-prime-minister Valerian Cristea addressed to the prime-minister Vasile Tarlev regarding the discussions that took place at the last meeting of the Tripartite Commission. According to him, this decision, although voted, doesn’t yet bear the prime-minister’s signature. Cerescu expressed his conviction that “the Patronages will win”. We remind that on June 26, 2006, members of the tripartite commission contested the amendments to the law on the payment methods of the sick leave. They agreed that the Government must institute at first a control mechanism over the veracity of giving the sick leaves and only after this to come back to this issue. The employers state that the payment modalities of the sick leave entail new taxes imposed to the economic agents, fact that could determine many of them to conceal a part of the incomes and to enter the underground economy. They consider that it would have been correct to transpose some expenditures on the behalf of the social insurances budget if the tax for the Social Fund would be reduced. The new payment methods of the sick leaves, approved recently by the Government, stipulate that the first day of the leave should not be paid and the employers must pay the next 7 days of the sick leave. The aim of the decision was to diminish the morbidity of the employees, because the information of the Government shows that in the last year, the expenses of the Social Fund for paying the sick leaves increased by 40%.