By Richard Thompson

In Germany, employees miss more than 15 days a year because of illness on average. Now, businesses in Germany are calling for the abolishing of sick pay on the first day of symptoms.

When the Federal Statistical Office reported in January, that the average number of sick days taken by workers in Germany was 15.1 in 2023, many businesses suggested that this was because people were skiving off work.

Germany is now the "world champion when it comes to sick days," said Oliver Bäte, CEO of the Allianz insurance group.

Doctors, however, had a different take. "What I'm seeing in my practice these days is exactly what recent reports from health insurance companies have shown: More people are coming into my practice with acute infections," Markus Beier, the federal chairman of Germany association of general practitioners, told DW. "To some extent, this is still the belated effect of the pandemic."

Klaus Reinhardt, president of the German Medical Association, also sees increased infections as the main reason for the record number of sick people. "Playing sick does not happen on a large scale," he said. Since the coronavirus pandemic, more people in general have been taking sick leave because of infectious diseases. During the two or three years of lockdown and infection prevention, preventing infection has taken on a different meaning.

"What is even more worrying is that more and more patients are suffering from mental illnesses and chronic pain," Beier said. "These are often also very long-term illnesses." Aging workforce

Since December 2023, patients in Germany have been able to call their general practitioner to request sick leave for a maximum of five days. Advertisement

"There is absolutely no basis for concluding that the high rate of sickness is linked to the ability to call in sick by telephone," Beier said. "After all, this is only possible for people who are a registered patient in the practice they are calling, where their medical history is known. We are not seeing any significant levels of misuse."

Reinhardt said the introduction of sick notes that can be sent electronically to employers and health insurance companies has contributed to the perceived increase in sick days in Germany. Previously, not all patients would submit their certificates to the health insurance companies, so not all sick notes were recorded.

"What we are seeing is that the average age of the population and the workforce is increasing," Reinhardt said. "And with it comes an increase in the number of chronic illnesses and sick days."

'The right thing'

Bäte, the insurance CEO, recently proposed abolishing sick pay on the first day of symptoms. This could save €40 billion ($41 billion) per year, he claimed.

The proposal was met with a barrage of criticism. The German Trade Union Confederation warned of the associated costs and the risk of infection and accidents due to the increasing number of people reporting to work sick. The German Metal Workers' Union described the proposal as outrageous and disastrous to accuse employees of playing sick.

Beier said being forced to work sick or go without pay would primarily affect people who can't afford to lose a day's wage.

Claus Michelsen, the chief economist for the German Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies, said sick pay on the first day of symptoms was introduced to prevent people from coming to work ill. "The reason why the unpaid sick day was abolished in the 1970s was to prevent people from infecting their colleagues. That is essentially the right thing to do," Michelsen explained.

Other countries are also seeking solutions as infections in the workplace become more widespread. This is why Michelsen recommends looking to Scandinavia: "In Sweden, for example, the partial sick leave model has been implemented successfully, which makes it possible to work from home in the case of minor illnesses, among other options."

Spain and Greece don't allow workers to collect sick pay on the first day of symptoms. Countries such as the USA, Canada, Japan, and South Korea do not have any universal sick pay. However, it is highly unlikely that Germany, which was one of the first countries in the world to introduce universal sick pay in 1884, will try to touch such a controversial topic. The law guarantees 100% of income for up to six weeks from the first day of illness.

"We should strengthen prevention as a building block of the health care system," Michelsen said. "Early detection measures or even just attending classes for back pain can detect illnesses more quickly or alleviate the consequences."

By April Lanux

Police across the nation found 143 people who accessed and gambled on overseas online casinos from January to November last year on a preliminary basis, 2.7 times higher than the previous year, according to the National Police Agency.

The authorities discovered these online casino users by analyzing accounts used to pay for gambling. It is estimated that there could be over 3 million people in Japan who access online casinos. Under such circumstances, experts point out that it is necessary to consider regulating access to online casinos. Gambling from Japan is illegal

According to the NPA, 62 people were found to have gambled on online casinos in 2019, the largest annual number until 2024, and the figure has remained at around 50 in recent years. However, the number of online casino users found by police surged to 143 as of the end of November last year.

Many are individuals who used their smartphones to gamble online, and about 90% of the 143 people used online casinos that have no physical locations.

A Tokyo-based international casino research institute conducted a survey on 6,000 men and women in Japan in August and September and found that 2.8% of the respondents had gambled using online casinos in the past 12 months, which means that about 3.46 million people are estimated to have gambled online.

There are many online casinos overseas, with some introducing themselves as “Safe and secure” and “We offer 24-hour Japanese language support.” However, even if gambling is legal overseas, doing so from Japan is illegal.

The police have been trying to identify online casino users. In November, the Metropolitan Police Department sent papers on 10 people to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors’ Office on suspicion of gambling, believing that these people had been engaged in sports gambling on a website operated by a company on the Caribbean island of Curacao.

The suspects are in their 20s to 60s and include a housewife, a company executive, a certified accountant and a fire department official. They are quoted by police as saying, “I gambled to ease my stress,” or “I heard I would be able to make money.” All of them lost money while gambling, and one lost ¥30 million, according to the police.

Payment agencies aid betting

The police have been identifying an increasing number of online casino users because they have found payment agency service operators. These service operators gain fees such as by exchanging yen and crypto assets with points used in online casinos on behalf of online casino operators.

The MPD decided that these services constitute the act of aiding gambling activities and arrested two operators in September 2023. The MPD found that about ¥20 billion had been transferred from about 42,000 customers to bank accounts related to these operators over a five-month period. The police then utilized a special tool to analyze crypto-asset accounts used to purchase points for gambling and identified about 130 people who gambled online, leading to the surge in the number of online casino users found by police last year.

The prefectural police in Chiba and Hyogo in 2024 also found payment agency service operators and their customers. “It is a huge mistake to think that they can evade the police because the casino sites are operated overseas or because they use crypto assets,” a senior police official said. Measures needed urgently

According to a survey conducted in fiscal 2023 by the National Hospital Organization Kurihama Medical and Addiction Center, 19.9% of people who are suspected to be gambling addicts said they gambled online more often than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Online casinos allow people to gamble as if they were playing video games and bet money at a faster pace, which triggers gambling addiction more easily,” said Yoichi Torihata, a professor emeritus at Shizuoka University who is familiar with casino-related issues. “Since the less-regulated Japanese market is targeted by overseas online casinos, the government needs to accelerate countermeasures, including blocking measures to prevent access to online casinos.”