Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil has come out against the abolition of sick pay on the first day of illness.

On Thursday, the SPD politician rejected a proposal to this effect made by Oliver Bäte, CEO of the insurance group Allianz. In an interview with the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) news network, Heil accused the manager of placing employees on sick leave under general suspicion of playing hooky: "Restricting sick pay will not happen with me and the SPD."

An employer who suspects that someone is playing hooky can also demand that a certificate of incapacity for work be provided from the first day onwards, Heil said. "Anyone caught playing hooky must also expect consequences under labor law."

Bäte had suggested in the "Handelsblatt" that a waiting day should be introduced. The costs for the first day of illness would then have to be borne by the employees themselves through loss of earnings. Currently, employers are fully responsible for the continued payment of wages for the first six weeks of illness. This is laid down by law, but is also part of many collective agreements.

The trade union-affiliated Hans Böckler Institute also opposed restrictions on sick pay. Its social expert Eike Windscheid-Profeta pointed out that sick leave rates have fluctuated over the years without any changes to the legal regulations. It is not plausible that the high in sick leave in Germany is due to employees taking advantage of the regulations on sick pay. Mental illnesses, which are associated with particularly long periods of absence, are partly responsible for the increase in absenteeism. At the same time, digitalization is being used to track sick days more extensively.

CDU POLITICIAN: "DON'T MAKE ME LOOK A FOOL AGAIN"

Karl-Josef Laumann, a CDU politician and the health minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, also rejected the idea of a waiting day. "I've been burned before," Laumann told the "Rheinische Post." "As a member of the Bundestag, I once voted in favor of their introduction. Then the IG Metall union, with the consent of the employers, used a collective agreement to collect the waiting days for their industries. At the time, I swore to myself: I won't let myself be chased into the horns again on this issue."

In 1996, the CDU-FDP government led by then-chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) had reduced the statutory sick pay entitlement to 80 percent of wages instead of 100 percent as part of a program for more growth and employment. After long disputes, IG Metall and the employers of the metal and electrical industry in Lower Saxony undermined the legal regulation in December 1996 and agreed on 100 percent continued pay, regardless of the respective legal regulation. The red-green coalition government formed in 1998 repealed the legal amendment in 1999 and also reintroduced 100 percent sick pay in law.

(Report by Holger Hansen. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)