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According to the Employment Contracts Act, employees are entitled to receive full pay during sick leave. The basis for pay is the salary agreed in the employment contract, unless the employee is covered by a collective agreement. Some collective agreements require the employment relationship to last for a certain period of time before an employee is entitled to sick pay. Usually, this period is one month, but there are longer waiting times in the municipal sector, for example.
According to the Employment Contracts Act, the employer pays sick pay until the end of the ninth working day following the day of illness, but no longer than until the employee’s right to daily allowance under the Health Insurance Act begins. The right to sick pay under collective agreements is usually considerably longer. The payment period is usually staggered according to the duration of the employment relationship. The general compensation period is between 28 and 56 days. The employer pays the difference between wages and daily allowance for this extended period. It is often the case that the employer pays full wages for the compensation period and receives Kela’s sickness allowance for this period.
If the same illness recurs within 30 days of payment of the previous daily allowance, the employee is entitled to sickness benefit from the day following the day on which the illness occurred. In this case, the employer is legally obliged to pay sick pay only for the day of illness. Collective agreements often stipulate that in such cases, the calculation of sick pay periods continues from where they left off when they last fell ill. If there are more than 30 days between the recurrence of the illness or if the illness is a different illness, the sick pay period starts again.
