In NL the concept of ‘sick days’ doesn’t exist. If you are ill, you are ill. You can get the flu and be out for a week or so and nobody bats an eye. Some use more than others and some may game the system.
But overall we in NL are not familiar with the stress of losing our days off because of illness. This should be the norm for every decent country that cares about human well-being.
>In NL the concept of ‘sick days’ doesn’t exist. If you are ill, you are ill
Isn't that illness called a sick day? Like I said, everyone calls it unlimited sick days, but in Austria, and I think in Poland, Germany too it's limited to 90 days per year. Sick longer than 90 days gets your cased evaluated by a doctor's committee and probably moved to disability pay. But I doubt there is such a thing as unlimited sick day. Sure, you can be sick for an unlimited time, but your employee and insurance status will change after a certain number of days.
I have not seen anything about 90 sick-days in any contract with an employer ever, even when I was still a regular 'waged' employee.
Even if you get serious ill your employer has to pay, so from what I know, employers need to insure themselves against this. Only after 2 years are they off the hook and will people be transferred to disability pay if required.
In some sense, discussing about 90 days vs. 'unlimited' sick days is not really relevant. 90 days would feel like unlimited to me as a regular healthy employee anyway.
But to be very clear, in NL we don't have these 90 days of sick leave. We don't have a budget as an employee for sick leave.
> I have not seen anything about 90 sick-days in any contract with an employer ever, even when I was still a regular 'waged' employee
Have you checked your national insurance conditions? In Austria this also isn't in any employment contract because it's ratified in the national health insurance agreement everyone working here must have, which limits everyone to 90 days sick leave but many people don't know this and think they have "unlimited" sick leave. IIRC, Poland and Germany also have 90 days of sick leave by law.
Maybe you're not fully aware of it but I'd assume your national health insurance will specify a similar threshold by law that's obviously not in your employment contract.
From the link you posted, I find this baffling that this is allowed in Europe.
>Some Dutch workplaces include “no-pay waiting days” (loonvrije wachtdagen) — these are the first one or two days of your sickness where the employer is not obliged to pay wages.
But overall we in NL are not familiar with the stress of losing our days off because of illness. This should be the norm for every decent country that cares about human well-being.