Trade Association Managing Director Rainer Will complained on Wednesday of a significant increase in short sick leave of between one and three days and called for the abolition of telephone sick leave.
“Apart from the fact that this possibility only exists to a limited extent anyway, this general suspicion must be resolutely rejected. On the contrary, we are hearing more and more about cases where employees go to work sick so as not to let their colleagues down,” says the chairwoman of the GPA trade union , Barbara Teiber, according to a broadcast on Thursday. “If there is a problem with increased sick leave in retail, then this is largely due to the stress caused by staff shortages and working conditions that make people ill.”
Criticism of the Chamber of Labour
The Chamber of Labor (AK) also expressed criticism. “We know from an AK survey that 90 percent of employees go to work sick,” said AK director Silvia Hruška-Frank. The fact that the trade association puts the employees under general suspicion of celebrating sick because short-term sick leave has increased is unacceptable from the point of view of the AK. “An industry that is desperately looking for staff is not well advised to discredit its employees in this way,” said Hruška-Frank.
The number of sick days increased significantly last year after the exceptional years 2020 and 2021, the Austrian health insurance fund recently announced. With more than six million cases of sick leave, it was also an increase of around 20 percent compared to 2018 (5.0 million cases) and 2019 (5.1 million). In absolute numbers, short-term sick leave has also increased, but not as a percentage, said ÖGK spokeswoman Marie-Theres Egyed according to the “Salzburger Nachrichten”. “And the telephone sick note expired in May of the previous year,” says Egyed. It is only possible if there is a suspicion of corona.
Increased sick leave was foreseeable
An increase in sick leave was already foreseeable, because since August 1, 2022, a corona disease has no longer been considered an isolation under the Epidemic Act, but as normal sick leave and is also reflected in the sick leave statistics, according to the ÖGB. The fact that additional sick leave occurs with an additional illness in the infection season should under no circumstances be blamed on the employees and misused for political games to worsen working conditions, said ÖGK employee chairman Andreas Huss. “Employers should rather prevent sick leave with good working conditions, best structured with company health promotion.”
The trade union GPA also sees a great need for action on the part of the trade when it comes to creating more attractive working conditions. “Especially when implementing more working time quality, employers are required to have a five-day week for everyone and better planning of working hours,” says trade unionist Teiber. There is also room for improvement when it comes to salaries, the starting salaries in retail should “finally” be raised to over 2,000 euros gross.
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