Germany has decided that calling in sick over the phone became too easy - and now it wants a doctor's note from the very first day. A change that directly affects the thousands of Macedonians working there.

The German government is tightening the sick-leave rules: instead of the current phone notification, a worker will have to bring a doctor's note from the first day of absence. Notification by phone was introduced as a temporary measure during the pandemic, but later stayed on permanently for minor illnesses - colds, flu, viruses. Now the authorities claim that this is exactly what opened the door to abuse.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the country cannot ignore the growing abuse of sick leave, while the head of the employers' association, Rainer Dulger, was even blunter: „the higher the sick-pay benefit, the higher the absence from work.” Dulger is also proposing stricter measures - capping uninterrupted sick leave at six weeks a year and scrapping night and weekend-work bonuses for the duration of the leave.

Behind the rhetoric stand numbers that explain why Berlin got rattled. In 2024 the average German employee was absent 20.8 days, up from around 16.8 days in 2020. In total, 881.5 million working days were lost, which by estimates means 134 billion euros in lost output plus tens of billions more that employers paid in wages while workers stayed home. Added up, the bill tops 200 billion euros - a figure even Europe's richest economy doesn't want to play with.

For a reader here, this is not someone else's story. Germany is home to a large share of working-age Macedonians who go there looking for what's missing at home - a decent wage and orderly rights. When Berlin tightens the sick-leave rules, it directly touches everyone working in a German factory or on a construction site. And while over there they argue whether 20 days of sick leave is too much, it's worth asking - how many days of sick leave can a worker here realistically afford, and does anyone even count his lost days at all.