Three days of sick leave paid by employer will affect salary of employee, employers

The chairman of the National Employers Confederation Leonid Cerescu said the recently adopted legislative amendments whereby the employers are obliged to pay allowances to employees for three days of sick leave will affect employees’ salaries, Info-Prim Neo reports. In most of the cases, the sick leave is given for a period of 4-5 days. Thus, the employers will sustain direct losses by at least 50% higher than last year, when they paid allowances for one day of sick leave. “These costs will affect the employee’s salary as the economic entities will have to balance somehow the costs so that they do not go bankrupt,” said Leonid Cerescu. He also said it is regrettable that the Government and Parliament, which were repeatedly warned that these changes will negatively affect the situation of the economic entities, did not take into account employers’ arguments. “Some of the employers will limit the number of workplaces, while others will start to work illegally. Those who are in a more difficult situation will go bankrupt. Both the economic entities and the government will be affected,” said Leonid Cerescu. As to Minister of Labor Valentina Buliga’s statements that there were cases when the economic entities resolved the economic and technical unemployment problems through the agency of the state budget, Leonid Cerescu expressed his regret at the fact that an official makes such generalizations. “If she has such examples, she should sue them and win the case so as to teach other economic entities a lesson. Most of the employers do no commit illegalities. Missis Valentina Buliga said the changes were implemented in order to make the economic entities more responsible, but this was done last year, when the employer was obliged to pay one day of sick leave and the employee also one day of sick leave,” said Leonid Cerescu. According to him, if they want to increase responsibility, they should have diminished certain contributions. “The taxes were actually raised now. Abroad they pay for more days of sick leave, but they probably took into account all kinds of costs. In our country, this wasn’t done,” said the employers’ leader. Parliament adopted in final reading the given legislative amendments on January 15.