The Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry has lashed out at a government proposal to have parents taking sick leave when their children are unwell.

This “will serve to institutionalise an injustice against employers” and “will erode further Malta’s competitiveness and potential for growth”, the Chamber said.

The proposal is being looked into by the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations and it could be implemented during this legislature after consultation with the social partners.

But the Chamber said sick leave was a concession and not a right and came at a cost to the employer. It should not be exploited or trivialised. Employees had to make use of sick leave only when they “are genuinely unfit to attend for work”, it argued. There was ample annual leave available and this should be used to attend to family responsibilities.

While employers tried to be flexible and compassionate with their staff, this measure would create additional burdens not only for them but also for other employees.

The Chamber said it could bring about a “perverse effect” by possibly encouraging workers to report to work when they were sick in an effort to “save” their sick leave for when their children were unwell. Again, this would be unfair to the employer and fellow workers, it added.

The cost of such a measure would further erode the competitiveness of small and larger companies alike and would continue to exacerbate economic problems.

Companies with a small number of employees would feel the effect disproportionately and the proposal could serve as a dangerous precedent because it might be further extended, the Chamber added.

It said it was in favour of family-friendly measures and made proposals aimed at finding the right balance between granting reasonable flexibility to workers and incurring losses in competitiveness due to business disruption and financial cost.

The national policy must place particular emphasis on measures that discouraged absenteeism and promoted people at the place of work, it said.