A report submitted Wednesday, February 20 to the Prime Minister recommends generalizing the unpaid waiting day in the event of sick leave.
Will private sector employees soon be affected by the unpaid waiting day in the event of sick leave? It is in any case the flagship proposal, but also the most sensitive, of the report submitted on Wednesday February 20 to Prime Minister Édouard Philippe.
Commissioned last September from Jean-Luc Bérard, director of human resources for the industrial group Safran, from Stéphane Oustric, professor of medicine at the University of Toulouse and from Stéphane Seiller, magistrate at the Court of Auditors, this report contains some twenty proposals on the reform of the system of daily allowances. Its objective: to simplify it and make it fairer, but also to offset the cost of sick leave on the health insurance budget: approximately 7.5 billion euros per year.
An unpaid waiting day for all
It is in this perspective that the proposal to extend the “public order” waiting day for workers in the public and private sectors has been put forward. Currently, this unpaid waiting day concerns all civil servants but, among private sector employees, 60% to 70% of the three waiting days are compensated via provident agreements signed within the professional branches.
Designed to put all workers on an equal footing, this measure greatly displeased the trade unions met, acknowledge the three authors of the report. They therefore suggest “that this hypothesis should only be considered as a counterpart to developments allowing better support for certain populations of employees not covered by the employer supplement”.
Compensation by companies
To compensate for this sensitive point, the authors of the report recommend measures of “social justice”. They thus wish to allow nine million employees, including those with less than one year of seniority, fixed-term contracts, or home helpers employed by an individual, to benefit from compensation from the employer for the loss of salary due to sick leave. Currently, Social Security compensates the employee up to 50% of the gross salary from the fourth day.
Another idea on the table: flat rate the daily allowance paid by Social Security and finish with its proportional calculation and the cap at 0.9 SMIC. If this measure were adopted, the amount of the daily allowance could be set at 0.7 SMIC for all. “This measure, neutral for Social Security, would represent a direct saving for all companies whose average salary is less than twice the flat rate”, as well as “a massive reduction in management costs”, explain the authors of the report.
Among the other recommendations, that of replacing random medical checks of employees at their home by summons to the office, another to promote teleworking or even therapeutic half-time after a long sick leave to “prevent occupational disintegration”.
Before any negotiations, the report will be presented to the social partners in the coming months.
