A heated debate for a while, but now even more in the news as Germany announced a tougher stance against absenteeism last week and now both sides of Spain's political landscape join the discussion with different views and approaches to what is a growing concern in Europe.
On the one hand, Spain is preparing tighter monitoring of repeated sick leave. After getting advice from fiscal watchdog AIReF, Pedro Sánchez's government plans to reinforce supervision of workers who take two or more periods of sick leave in a year. It comes after temporary incapacity cases rose by almost 60% since 2017.
On the other, the opposition PP wants a much harder response. Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has called absenteeism a "cancer" and says that, if he governs (with next election scheduled for next year), he would seek a reform to reduce pay and benefits for absent workers, "with or without" agreement from unions and employers, which has caused great controversy in the country.
The core dispute is what is driving such significant rise. Employers and the PP point to costs, alleged abuse/fraud and companies' limited ability to challenge questionable sick leaves, while unions and the government argue that the increase is linked to overloaded healthcare, an ageing workforce and post-pandemic mental health problems, not simply fraud. The controversy is also about how the numbers are framed and conveyed publicly. Critics say that mixing medical leave, paid permits, and other authorised absences under the same "absenteeism" label distorts the debate and risks treating legitimate sickness as misconduct.
While Spain stands out in Europe, it's not because companies carry the heaviest sick-leave burden. Spanish employers currently cover 12 days of ordinary sick leave, far less than companies in Belgium, around 30 days; Germany, six weeks; Austria, up to 12 weeks; or the Netherlands, where employers can pay 70% of salary for up to two years. However, those 12 days refer to both wages and social security contributions, meaning that employers may still face the latter together with collective-agreement supplements for the duration of the whole leave, which is why business groups argue that the real cost goes way beyond those 12 days. Finally, sick leave is rising across the EU, but Spain's incapacity-related absence rate is higher than the bloc average: 4.5% in 2024, compared with 2.5% across the EU.
Sources: 1, 2, 3.