Trade unions demand paying sickness benefit to employees from first day of sick leave

The trade unions request that the authorities should pay sickness benefit to employees from the first day of the sick leave. The chairman of the National Confederation of Trade Unions Oleg Budza said they presented sufficient arguments for the Constitutional Court to declare the recent amendments to the Law on Sick Pay as unconstitutional, Info-Prim Neo reports. “The Constitutional Court will pass judgment on April 10. We hope that the judges will take a correct decision and this day will be a bright day for the employers and employees. It’s not normal to increase the burden on salary earners. Among the European countries, only in the Baltic Countries the sickness benefit is paid at the employee’s expense, but the GDP per capita there is much higher than in Moldova,” Oleg Budza said in a news conference on April 6. “We demand decreasing the contribution to the social insurance funds so that we do not pay 6% of the salary, or we should be paid for the whole sick leave. The authorities say the amendments are aimed at making the employers and employees more responsible, but in fact they increase the number of unemployed persons as the employers prefer to get rid of those who are in poor health.” According to the trade unions, the amendments to the Law on Sick Pay violate a series of provisions of the Constitution. Laws that limit the human rights and freedoms shouldn’t be adopted as the duty of the state is to protect the person. Until July 2010, the sick leave was fully paid from the social insurance funds. In order to cut public spending on allowances for temporary incapacity for work, it was decided that the first day of the sick leave will be paid by the employee, the second day by the employer and from the third day the allowance will be paid from the budget. The new changes oblige the employers to pay for three days of the employee’s sick leave instead of one. The sick pay is allocated from the state social insurance budget from the fifth day of the sick leave. According to the National Confederation of Trade Unions, since July 1, 2011 until January 1, 2012, the state did not pay over 10 million lei in sickness benefit to employees. The number of beneficiaries fell by over 57,000. One unpaid day of the sick leave costs about 79 lei.