The National Assembly approved Monday evening a measure allowing employees on sick leave of non-professional origin to acquire 24 days of paid leave per year, despite criticism from unions and the left who consider it unequal.
We are creating a new right for employees, underlined the Minister of Labor Catherine Vautrin, during the first reading examination of a bill to bring France into compliance with European law.
The government amendment provides that in the event of illness of non-occupational origin, employees acquire two days per month of paid leave, up to a limit of 24 working days (i.e. four weeks, including Saturdays) per year. Until now, this was not a right, although some companies could grant such leave.
In the event of occupational illness, employees continue to receive paid leave during their leave at the same rate as currently (five weeks).
The CGT, CFDT, FO and CFE-CGC union organizations denounce this discrimination between the four weeks of leave for illnesses of non-occupational origin and the five for other employees.
The unions also criticize the limitation to 15 months of the period which the employee will then have to take accrued leave.
For employment contracts that ended before the law came into force, they are offended by the three-year limitation on the retroactivity of the system, i.e. a maximum of 12 weeks of financial compensation for untaken leave.
In the Chamber, the left relayed these protests. The ecologist Sophie Taill-Polian considered it truly outrageous to steal a few days of leave from people on sick leave. Several elected officials from the left have criticized the government for having cost employers, rather than the unions.
We are trying to give back rights to employees that they did not have before, replied Macronist Ludovic Mendes, explaining at the same time that he wanted to take into account bearable financial consequences for small businesses.
The Court of Cassation revised the case law in September by ruling that employees are entitled to paid leave during their period of absence, even if this absence is not linked to a work accident or an occupational illness, by virtue of a European directive.
A decision contrary to the French Labor Code which limited this leave to cases of occupational illness or work accident.
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