"NIS 5 billion - this is the amount that employers will pay in one month for sick days due to isolation and illness"

NIS 5 billion - this is the amount that employers will pay in one month for sick days due to isolation and illness due to Corona's omicron strain - the Manufacturers' Association warns. The calculation was made according to forecasts, some of which are disputed, according to which 4-2 million verified to Omicron are expected. This means that a quarter to a third of the labor force in Israel will have to stay in isolation at some point.
According to this calculation and an analysis conducted in the Economics Division of the Manufacturers' Association, the cost of sick days for employers will reach NIS 5 billion in one month. It also emerged from the calculation that it is a matter of 7 million working days that the economy will lose.
The chairman of the presidency of employers and businesses and the president of the Manufacturers' Association, Dr. Ron Tomer, sent a letter to the Minister of Finance, Avigdor Lieberman, demanding that a mechanism be built that would lead the state to participate in financing the cost of sick days. This is similar to the participation in the cost of isolation days that is customary today, a participation that was determined following a petition by the Manufacturers' Association to the High Court a few months after the onset of the epidemic.
The letter does not address the possibility that asymptomatic workers will be able to continue working from their homes without being required to arrive at the workplace. In cases where the presence of employees is required, the 10-day isolation required today leads to employers having to pay sick days in return.
In his letter to the Minister of Finance, Tomer stated that the support mechanisms must be adjusted quickly to enable the payment of wages to the verified employed. The letter claimed that Verified Corona was not necessarily ill and it was estimated that about half of the verified would not develop symptoms of illness. In addition, employers are demanding in the letter to shorten the duration of isolation for asymptomatic verifiers, as has been done in the U.S. and other countries.
"Employers will suffer from a slowdown in their business due to illness and will be required to pay sick days in disproportionate amounts - which have not been acceptable to date," Tomer warned. "This could lead to a severe cash flow problem for businesses and a significant damage to them. Inserting an insane cost of NIS 5 billion in one month on sick days, half of which for verified asymptomatic patients, would be a death blow to employers."