The president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, proposes to incentivize companies with fewer sick leaves and once again casts suspicion on those who need to stop working due to illness. He does so this Monday before businessmen gathered at the XXIX National Congress of Family Business, in Madrid, just hours after the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced general elections for November 29.
"How is it possible that most of them occur on Mondays and Fridays? How is it possible?", asks Feijóo. The insinuation of fraud thus accompanies a proposal that may end up linking advantages for companies to the number of sick workers they have on staff. The popular leader does not specify what incentives he would grant or how he would prevent that incentive from translating into pressure to work without being recovered.
"We are working on a bonus model for companies because companies also have responsibility," he explains. His approach contemplates companies with a percentage of sick leaves "below X," a good medical service, worker care, and a work environment that motivates the staff. In these circumstances, he argues, it would be possible to study how to "reduce certain obligations", without identifying what they would be or setting the threshold to access these advantages.
Feijóo also proposes hiring more evaluating doctors for the National Social Security Institute (INSS) and improving their coordination with mutual insurance companies, with a shared medical information system. These are measures distinct from rewarding a lower incidence of sick leaves, although he presents them within the same package to combat absenteeism. "If people don't want to vote for me, let them not vote for me," he states in defending his position, convinced that talking about it will not give him votes.
The data behind the suspicion
The reference to Mondays and Fridays has a problem that Feijóo leaves unexplained. A report by Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), prepared with Social Security data from 2024, places 27.2% of temporary incapacity processes initiated on Mondays and 13.4% on Fridays. Together they represent 40.6%, less than half; furthermore, Friday registers fewer processes than Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. These are 2024 figures, but they contradict the idea of a majority concentrated on those two days that the PP leader repeats without specifying the statistical series used.
The union explains that Monday's record accumulates processes that begin during the weekend, when fewer reports are processed. Confusing the administrative date of a sick leave with the moment the illness appears leads to a misleading reading. That calendar, by itself, also does not prove that the worker is faking an ailment.
In his speech, Feijóo compares a daily average of 450,000 absences in 2018 with 1.2 million in 2025, and estimates the cost at 13,000 and 31,000 million euros, respectively. He presents them as magnitudes of absenteeism, without breaking down what absences are included or what part he attributes to fraud. UGT already warned in July, in response to his previous statements, that comparing absolute figures without considering the increase in the employed population distorts the analysis, and called for addressing waiting lists, mental health, and occupational prevention.
The popular leader adds an irony about the self-employed, whom he describes as the healthiest people in Spain because they take fewer sick leaves. A lower use of the benefit does not allow concluding that a group is healthier. Temporary incapacity protects those who cannot work due to illness or accident; in the general case of common illness, it covers 60% of the regulatory base between the fourth and twentieth day and 75% from the twenty-first, although collective agreements can improve these amounts.
The struggle for mutual insurance companies
Monday's proposal prolongs a controversy that Feijóo has reopened several times. On September 29, before the Catalan employers' association Cecot, he announced that he would allow mutual insurance companies to grant medical discharge in "certain pathologies" if he comes to power. These entities can already issue discharges in processes of professional origin; in sick leaves due to common illness, they can propose them, but the decision rests with the competent public doctors. Expanding that capacity is precisely one of the points rejected by the unions.
CCOO expressed its frontal rejection on September 30, before today's announcement of bonuses. It recalled that mutual insurance companies are associations of employers and warned of the conflict of interest that expanding their powers to decide on a social right would entail. Its alternative involves strengthening public resources and, if the role of mutual insurance companies is increased, integrating them as managing entities of the Social Security under its direction.
The General Union of Workers (UGT) also opposed it last week. Its deputy general secretary for Union Policy, Fernando Luján, pointed out that mutual societies manage public funds and are governed by associated companies. The union believes that allowing them to decide when a common illness leave ends would put the worker's recovery in the hands of someone who has an economic interest in shortening the process.
The precedent dates back to July, when Feijóo described absenteeism as "a cancer that we cannot afford" and questioned agreements that allow salaries to be maintained during leave. The PP then clarified that he was referring to fraud. Last week, the leader defended that people with serious illnesses should receive 100% of their salary, a clarification that coexists with his new insinuations about workers who fall ill.
UGT reminds that there is already a path agreed upon by unions and employers for mutual societies to collaborate in tests, treatments, and rehabilitation of certain ailments, with the worker's consent and coordination with public health. They can also perform examinations and make proposals for discharge. The decision on recovery is the limit that the union demands to maintain. As Luján stressed on September 30, "it is a medical act, not an act of economic management."
