Alex

As a Dutch person let me tell you it's way worse than it seems. The AVERAGE stress related absence is 250+ days. The AVERAGE burnout related absence is 300+ days. While on sick-leave, you can return to work for just 4 weeks and the 2 year period **resets**. Your employer is forced to assist you in this. They have to pay for doctors, experts, and so on. If they don't, you get an extra year's wages. While on sick-leave, you can work a second job. As long as this is outside business hours of the first job, or the work is different, your first employer still pays you 70%. Here's another cool one: you can go on holiday during sick-leave. The employer can force you to use your vacation days for that, but then they have to pay you 100% of your wages rather than 70% during that period. Simple solution: you just work with contractors right? No, because a contractor can just claim employee status after getting sick. Many such cases. All of this is obviously broken. If you say this you're met with half-baked "worker's rights" arguments, as you can see in this comment section.