German Workers Can’t Take a Single Sick Day Without a Doctors Note Now, Certificate Over The Phone Also Banned

Most of the mainstream media is beating around the bush with titles like „Merz announces reform package”. Given that most people read titles only I specifically chose this news outlet for this piece because they’re calling things for what they are.

Honest question - how likely it is for Merz to backtrack due to negative feedback? It’s likely that his voter base is for it, people have been subjected to neoliberal propaganda for so long that they think that failures of this system can only be fixed by more of it.

3rd largest economy in the World.

Merz: this is not working - Germans are too lazy - we need to change something.

It was like that in Poland prior to the pandemic but now we can take up to 3 days of leave from a doctor over the phone. Doctor’s note could always be backdated up to 1-2 days. I don’t think we’ll follow Germany in this even though we have even more neoliberal government because private healthcare lobby is so strong and private healthcare providers are the most accessible ones that offer doctor consultation over the phone. We still receive only 80% of salary while sick so people are incentivised to go to work when they shouldn’t. Extremely short sighted policies all around.

Belgium has this policy to be honest. And it sucks.

Essentially in the first few days you called just in to work and told them you are sick. No doctor ‘proof’ required. They had to trust you that you are. From the third day onwards you needed proof. So you had to go to the doctor and get it. Then they added during corona that you can call the doctor to get proof for smaller stuff like a common cold. Now they want to remove that all and sent anyone for anything to the doctor.

Plus the doctors / GP already have enough crap to do and are super full we constantly hear in the news that we need more doctors who work the villages blah blah blah. So now the few who do will haven even more work. Also also they claim the old system had been abused by the worker to skip work. Instead of realising that due to corona a lot of people actually still stay home when they are sick and don’t drag that shit to work.

In the US I just call or email my boss.

No one wants a sick person to come in and spread it around.

I've never once needed a note from a doc, even when I've been out for an extended period for a surgery.

It can vary wildly country to country. Some have a small quota of sick days that don’t require doctor’s note, some require it for every day. Most started allowing getting doctors note remotely during the pandemic. Governments here generally take more interest in it because social security is usually expected to pay at least some part of your salary during sick leave. There’s also a separate concept of „leave on demand” / force majeure leave that can be treated similar to those sick days without doctor’s note (EU started to require it recently).