Part-Time Sick Leave as a Sensible Structural Reform in Warken’s Austerity Package

The draft law presented last week by Health Minister Nina Warken focuses primarily on moderate cost-cutting measures designed to affect all stakeholders in the health care sector equally. One of the few innovative structural reforms in the package is the so-called part-time sick leave scheme, modelled on the Scandinavian system. Nicolas Ziebarth, head of the Research Unit “Labour Markets and Social Insurance” at ZEW Mannheim and a professor at the University of Mannheim, has been advocating such a modernisation of the German sick pay system for several months and welcomes the proposal: 

“Scientific research shows that part-time sick leave can reduce absenteeism. In the case of serious illnesses, particularly mental health conditions, this is a suitable tool for facilitating a gradual return to work. Part-time sick leave is well established in the Scandinavian countries and accounts for around a third of all sick days in Sweden, for example.

Depending on the illness and occupation, the employee would then work 25, 50 or 75 per cent of a full working day. This applies, for example, to back pain or mental illness. A prerequisite is that the doctors issuing the sick notes are appropriately trained to fully exploit the potential. 

If it were possible to convert just ten per cent of sick days – a good 900 million – into half-day sick leaves, the German economy would gain around 45 million working days, roughly the same as if a national public holiday were eliminated.”