Sick leave: talks open under the threat of cuts, care must come before punishment

The facts

The starting gun is fired this Thursday, 29 October. According to AFP, the eight representative organisations, the CGT, the CFDT, the CFE-CGC, the CFTC and FO on the employees' side, and the Medef, Les Entrepreneurs and the U2P on the employers' side, are opening negotiations on sick leave. This first session, probably held by videoconference, is mainly meant to set the method and the timetable.

The talks follow a letter sent on 7 October by the Minister of Labour, Jean-Pierre Farandou. According to the Revue fiduciaire and RH News, he calls for a "structural reform" and an agreement by 19 December, to take effect in 2027. Three areas are on the table: prevention and return to work after long sick leave; the parameters of compensation (duration, cap on daily allowances, top-up paid by the employer); and finally the accountability of prescribing doctors, employees and employers. AFP adds that the minister also wants new tools against sick leave deemed abusive, for example during workplace disputes.

The figures put forward by the ministry, reported by AFP, show what is at stake: around nine million compensated sick leaves in 2025, up about 10% in a few years, at a cost of 17.9 billion euros to the Assurance maladie (national health insurance). The government expects two billion euros of savings on this item in the 2027 Social Security budget, half of which should come from the agreement between the social partners.

The positions at stake

The government owns a clear line. Speaking on TF1 on 15 October, Jean-Pierre Farandou summed up his intention, according to an AFP dispatch carried by Sud Radio:

Protect short sick leaves less, so that there are fewer short sick leaves — Jean-Pierre Farandou

In return, he says he wants better coverage for long sick leaves and for some three million employees who are poorly protected today, such as temporary agency workers, while fighting the abuses that weigh on public finances.

Employers go further. On 22 September on France 2, the president of the Medef, Patrick Martin, described the rise in some short sick leaves as "suspicious" and proposed, Egora reports, "public order" waiting days, reimbursed neither by Social Security nor by supplementary health insurers. Companies could then stop compensating them. His reasoning: when employees lose nothing, nothing deters them from taking leave.

On the union side, the CFDT has taken note of the opening of talks, RH News reports, while calling the 2027 Social Security budget "unbalanced", since the effort would weigh too heavily on employees and retirees. The social climate is tense: AFP recalls the high school student mobilisation under way since mid-September and a day of strikes and demonstrations planned for 5 November.

The analysis

It would be dishonest to deny the problem. Spending of nearly 18 billion euros that is rising quickly weighs on social accounts that are already in deficit, and abuses, even if they are a minority, damage trust in a system built on solidarity. The wish to better protect long sick leaves and precarious workers is also right. And the choice to go through negotiation rather than decree deserves praise: social dialogue is not a formality, it is a way of governing.

But the diagnosis remains incomplete. The ministry's figures say how much sick leave costs, not why it is rising. Musculoskeletal disorders, back pain, mental health: the minister himself cited these causes on TF1. None of them is, by nature, fraud. The ageing of the working population and longer careers most likely also weigh on the number of sick leaves.

Making waiting days the central tool would mean treating the symptom rather than the cause. According to a Dares study cited by RH News, 45% of companies already compensate their employees' waiting days. Banning this compensation would cause a significant share of employees to lose income, first of all those who have neither savings nor room for manoeuvre. The risk is well known: an employee who cannot afford to lose several days' pay may come to work sick, worsen their condition and turn an avoided short sick leave into a long one.

Timing matters too. According to INSEE, household confidence fell in October to 80, its lowest level since June 2013, far below its long-term average set at 100. Cutting the income of sick people in such a context would send a disastrous signal to French people who already doubt the protection the community owes them.

Social Security was born in 1945, under the Provisional Government headed by General de Gaulle, from a simple idea: illness must not push a household into poverty. This legacy does not rule out rigour; it sets the order of priorities.

Conclusion

Rather than starting with the wallets of the sick, the social partners could start with work itself: strengthen an exhausted occupational health service, and adjust companies' contributions according to their prevention efforts, so that those that improve working conditions pay less than those that let absenteeism climb. The question to be answered by 19 December is simple: do we want to reduce sick leave by providing better care, or merely make it more costly for those who fall ill?

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.