Editorial

The General Workers' Union is correct in calling for guidelines from the Department of Labour and Industrial Relations about what constitutes an illness that qualifies workers for sick leave. This has been a long running area of disagreement between workers, employers and trade unions.

At the core of the issue is whether employers should have to pay for sick leave when workers suffer avoidable injuries while not on duty. Should an employer have to foot the bill when a worker suffers sun stroke as a result of a day at the beach? Should it be the worker who faces the consequences when a worker injures himself at sports?

The issue then gets more complicated. Should a worker be eligible for sick leave for, say, teeth whitening or should that procedure be followed during ordinary days off? What about other more complex forms of cosmetic surgery?

Legislation does not define sick leave but says that a doctor must certify that a worker is unfit to work.

Employers pay for the first three days of sick leave and compensation is subsequently shared for a period of time by the Department of Social Security and the employers. Employers have a right to send their own doctor to check on workers reporting sick.

Some collective agreements lay down conditions under which a worker is excluded from sick leave, such as injury from extreme sports.

The GWU said it has, for a long time been trying to obtain the agreement of managements about the removal of certain clauses in some collective agreements and has been resisting the insistence by management that certain situations should not qualify for sick leave, such as sunstroke, injury off work and, in the case of women, period pains.

Pointedly, the word used by the GWU has been "guidelines". It knows full well that medical conditions vary as widely as jobs. Cosmetic surgery, for example, can be seen as avoidable, but what if its cause would have been causing psychological problems?

A worker suffering a particular condition may not be able to work for a particular employer but would be perfectly fit for another. The union's call for talks with the Medical Association and the Malta Employers' Association should, therefore, be taken up, and ideally extended to include other trade unions.

Several European Union countries already have such guidelines and they could serve as a model for Malta to make progress on the issue. But rules in this area cannot be written in stone. What one should aim for is more consistency in sick leave certification.

The bottom line should, of course, be to eliminate sick leave abuse. One, unfortunately, hears of too many cases where workers see sick leave as an opportunity to be availed of. One also hears of complaints about company doctors acting more like policemen than doctors, or family doctors who appear to issue sickness certificates too easily. It must be said, however, that the incidence of sick leave in Malta does not appear to be higher than in other countries. Cases of conflict between company and family doctors are not too frequent either, but a mechanism should be set up to resolve them when they do crop up.

Employers know more than anyone that the best worker is a happy one. They know that excessive control can be counter-productive. But tolerating abuse is worse and would set a bad example to the whole workforce. Sick leave abuse imposes a burden on profitability and also constitutes benefit fraud.