Czechs miss more work due to illness and injury than almost anyone else
A new study released by the Czech Statistical Office has revealed that an average of 7 out of every one hundred Czechs misses work on any given day due to illness or injury. That's twice the rate of neighbouring Germany and Austria, and a third higher than the Czechs' former compatriots, the Slovaks. In fact, Czechs miss more work due to injury and illness than almost anyone else, at least in Europe.
For all that, the number of days Czechs now take for sick leave has gone up drastically since 1990: a whopping average of 30 days a year compared to just 18 days fifteen years ago. In a nutshell: a month in bed.
All that sick time begs the question why are Czechs so prone to illness? Or, rather, is it that they are not quite so ill at all, but rather taking advantage of a social system that provides relatively generous sick-leave benefits?
Experts suggest there is truth in both.
By and far the highest level of absenteeism can be found in the area of manual labour, in the agriculture sector and construction - areas of work where one can more easily come by injury. But, even there the numbers have gone down somewhat, due to improved safety standards over the recent years. Stanislav Drapal is from the Czech Statistics Office:
By comparison, professions that see the lowest absenteeism are teaching and government jobs. For obvious reasons these professions are hardly high-risk compared to manual labour: one simply isn't going to get injured in a classroom by writing on the blackboard. On the other hand, experts admit that the nature of the profession is such that many teachers may simply ignore illness to go to work, since, as professionals they simply can not afford to miss too much time away. The same could be said for many people who are self-employed, who simply can not afford to take time off, even though they pay for health insurance just like everybody else.
But, even there the numbers are going up.
"We think that there is a very strong link between the level of average salaries, according to branches, and the rules for social support. And, for example, branches with very low level salaries there is a higher percentage of disability or illness of people than in branches where people make more. In the second case, the number of cases on sick-leave is lower."
The numbers are all part of an on-going trend mapped by the Statistical Office that has sent a message to policy makers since the 90s and has provoked reaction. In an effort to reduce state expenditure, the government of former Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla introduced a fiscal reform bill that took effect in January that reduced sick-leave benefits for the first three days of illness to persuade potential malingerers it was better to stay at work.
As a result Czechs now receive a mere 25 percent of their salary for their first three days of illness - compared to twice that much a year ago. That makes many think twice about whether they're really sick enough to justify staying home.
Has it had an effect?
Quite definitely. The Statistical Office reports the number of those absent due to illness in the first half of 2004 dropped by a percentage point, and there are indications the drop could continue. The government is already planning to curb sick-leave benefits even more: from 69 percent of one's average daily salary on additional sick days to just 60 percent. To take further burden off the state, the government is also aiming to push through legislation which would require the employer - and not the state - to pay benefits for the first 14 days.
