German workers will have to report to a doctor in person to get a sick note on the first day they are ill, under strict proposals from Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
The tough new rules, aimed at boosting productivity in Germany’s stagnant economy, replace a system in which employees could get a sick note by phoning a doctor and did not need to do so until their third day off work.
“The number of sick days is too high,” Merz said. “We are creating a set of tools that will enable those involved, both employees and companies, to correct this.
“We know this is a tough decision. But we can no longer afford the competitive disadvantage caused by prolonged absences from work.”
The move will be welcomed by employers, but has angered Germany’s powerful trade unions. Frank Werneke, head of the services sector union Verdi, accused Merz of creating “a culture of distrust of employees”.
Doctors also opposed the change, warning it would swamp GPs with unnecessary appointments.
“Our practices would be flooded with patients who don’t need in-person care and would be better off in bed,” said the German Association of Family Physicians, which called the measure “an absolute catastrophe”.
Germans, on average, take about three weeks, or 15 working days, of sick leave a year. This is lower than in France and most Nordic countries, but higher than in Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Italy.
In Britain last year, 149 million working days were lost to sickness or injury. That represented 2% of all working hours, or an average of more than four days per worker.
Britons do not need to produce a sick note from their doctor until they have been off work for seven days.
Framework for growth
Merz’s attack on sick leave was part of a package of reforms to increase productivity and shore up Germany’s public finances, negotiated between his centre-right Christian Democratic Union Party and its coalition partner, the left-wing Social Democrat Party.
Other measures include a bonfire of red tape and a gradual increase in the age at which Germans can retire and draw a pension. This could rise from 67 to as high as 70 in coming decades.
Merz is also offering tax cuts for lower and middle-income earners, paid for by higher rates on incomes exceeding €250,000 ($501,000).
“It may have taken longer than many hoped, but Germany’s long-awaited summer of reforms has finally arrived,” Carsten Brzeski, an economist at Dutch bank ING, said.
“It is not a package that will morph a stagnating economy into a booming economy overnight. But it is a package that could create the preconditions, the framework, for future growth.”
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