this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
992 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
71885 readers
4571 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't know if it was all the sick workers, but a lot of those workers hadn't been to work all year (around September at the time).
Apparently it's not abnormal for people to abuse the system there and do things like this.
There was some stuff about patterns of a subset of workers taking Fridays off sick as well.
So it doesn't actually seem as outright bad if they were investigating abuse. However, if it was just a random person being sick, that would be very bad.
Edit: This is a terrible source I'm sure, but just an example that its a prevalent problem and there's even a business up about finding out if people are cheating the system - https://www.malaymail.com/news/money/2024/12/30/germanys-sick-leave-detectives-are-on-the-case-as-absenteeism-hits-records-and-company-pocketbooks/161436
the thing is: the employer has absolutely 0 say on if a person is sick or not. If a doctor says a person can't work: that's it. The company 0 in the matter.
In fact, the company isn't even allowed to ask why a person is sick. An official note from the doctor is all that matters
In Germany it's legal for an employer to visit an employee. The employee is under no obligation to open the door, however.
As this article covers, it doesn't really make sense to visit an employee, as the issue might not be visually apparent.
https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/gesellschaft/krankheit-kontrolle-arbeitgeber-erlaubt-100.html
Well clearly there's something that's allowed to be done as that article is about a guy that has a business determining if its legit or not?
But that's an investigator, not the employer, so maybe that makes a difference?
I would love to know how much is spent trying to catch people trying to game the system, compared to lost compensation because of sick leave.
Past a point, they must surely be spending more hiring this whole team of detectives than they would be just letting the workers take Friday off.
Yes, that reminds me of when Florida(?) started requiring drug testing for welfare recipients and ended up spending more on the tests than whatever they saved uncovering fraud.
That would be interesting ya. I don't think there would be any way to recoup the cost for the person calling is sick on Friday semi frequently or similar things, but for the people who are gaming the system and didn't work for a year, if they found a way to abuse it, it'd probably make sense if you truly were that suspicious.