A new measure adopted on Wednesday by Parliament allows employees on sick leave to obtain up to 24 days of paid leave per year. Here are the details of these new rights.
It’s done. Deputies and senators definitively adopted on Wednesday a provision which allows employees on sick leave of non-professional origin to acquire paid leave, which was not the case until now despite European legislation.
Currently, only employees on leave due to occupational illness can acquire five weeks of paid leave per year during this leave.
24 days of country leave per year
To comply with European law, the new law therefore provides that employees on sick leave of non-professional origin acquire 2 working days per month of paid leave. And this within the limit of 24 working days per year, that is to say 4 weeks including Saturdays.
On the other hand, in the event of occupational illness, employees continue to acquire paid leave during their absence at the same rate as currently, i.e. 30 working days, therefore 5 weeks.
Concretely, employees will have a period of 15 months to take leave acquired during the stoppage but also paid leave acquired before they were able to take it due to their absence due to illness or accident.
After stopping work due to illness or accident, the employer must inform the employee of the number of days of leave available to him and the date until which these days of leave can be taken, in the month which follows the return to work. If this information can always be done by any means conferring a certain date on their receipt, it is added that this can in particular be carried out by means of the pay slip, explains the Capstan law firm.
Country leave: I have been on sick leave, how can I force the employer to grant me CP?
Retroactive application
The text also provides for a retroactive application of the rules for acquiring and deferring paid leave rights in the event of sick leave since December 1, 2009 for current employment contracts. In other words, current employees will be able to ask their employer to recover paid leave from past sick leave, going back almost 15 years.
Note that these employees will only have 2 years from the entry into force of the law to take legal action if the employer does not grant them the requested leave.
The rule is different for employment contracts that ended before the law came into force. The retroactivity of the system is limited to 3 years, i.e. a maximum of 12 weeks of financial compensation for untaken leave.
Risks of litigation
These new rules are likely to lead to numerous disputes for former employees who are subject to the 3-year limitation period for compensatory compensation for paid leave, MoneyVox Mohamed Materi recently explained.
This associate lawyer in social law within the Alscio lawyers firm also expects that some will contest the fact that they do not have the right to recover CP beyond the 3 years preceding the termination of the contract in the to the extent that the law did not until now provide for the possibility of obtaining CP in the event of sick leave.
An analysis shared by the law firm EY which also anticipates lively debates during current or future litigation. At this stage, certain companies have already identified the situations of employees who have potentially acquired leave rights and who would be affected, taking into account the prescription to measure their risk and record the corresponding provision in their accounts. Caution is required for certain companies, while other companies are waiting for the final adoption of the law next May, explains EY in a note.
Indeed, for them to come into force, these provisions must still be published in Official newspaperprobably in May, once the possible referral to the Constitutional Council has passed within a month after the vote on the text by Parliament.