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Since January 1, work leave prescribed due to miscarriage has been paid from the first day, without any waiting period. A step forward for women, which could however place them in a delicate situation, professionally speaking. Here’s what you need to know.
As of January 1, 2024, and like every year, several health measures have evolved. A measure concerning women victims of miscarriage has particularly attracted attention: from now on, and according to the law of July 7, 2023, work leave given in this unique situation no longer suffers from any waiting day and is is therefore paid from the first day of absence. A welcomed decision, which aims to no longer cause impacted women to experience a double punishment: losing a child as well as three days of salary.
The employer can deduce your pregnancy plan from this
If this exception is today a step forward, the Ameli site added a paragraph on this novelty, on January 4, intending to warn patients on a particular point, noted by the daily Provence.
“If your employer maintains your salary during your work stoppage, he will be compensated on your behalf for all of the days of work stoppage prescribed for you. He will then be able to deduce that your stoppage is linked to a spontaneous termination of pregnancy “.
A detail, which may be important: miscarriage being the only reason for not having a waiting day in the event of work stoppage, your employer may thus have “indirectly knowledge of the medical reason for your stop”.
A situation which only concerns the situations of insured persons whose employer applies subrogation, that is to say when the daily Health Insurance allowances are transmitted directly to the company when it maintains the salary of its employee during a work stoppage. “Which is the case in 60% of work stoppages.”specifies the daily.
Pregnancy plans still impact women’s progress
A detail to know as the professional world unfortunately remains harder in 2024 for women than for men. Thus in March 2023 in an interview published by the magazine Causette Claire Hédon, rights defender, indicated that she still received a large number of seizures from women who are expecting a child and detailed:
“Women apply for a position, they are accepted then, when they say they are expecting a child, they are ultimately not accepted. In the private sector, we have women on permanent contracts who are pushed to resign or dismissed because than pregnant. In public employment, these tend to be non-renewals of fixed-term contracts.
Better protected at the end of pregnancy, many women decide to wait as late as possible to notify their employer when they are pregnant.
The law adopted in July 2023 partly anticipated this risk of discrimination and offers protection against dismissal for women who experience a late miscarriage (which occurs after the first trimester and before the 6th month of pregnancy). In this case, the employer can no longer “terminate the employment contract of an employee during the 10 weeks following a medically certified spontaneous termination of pregnancy”. Unfortunately the majority of miscarriages occur before this.
Deficiency or not, it remains your choice
Short days or not, you have the choice to choose what suits you best. The Ameli website spells it out in black and white:
“If you wish to prevent your employer from having indirect knowledge of the medical reason for your stopping, you can ask your practitioner to prescribe sick leave under common law conditions. He will then be compensated with application of the waiting period.