ABSTRACT
In all the stages of an employer-employee relationship problems will emerge whenever an employee gets sick. This applies to the conclusion of a contract of employment, to its performance and to the termination thereof. However, my reasoning is intended to centre on the question of how the employee’s income will be affected by sickness. Who, in this respect, is bound to take the sickness risk? The employer, the social insurance fund or the employee himself? The actual importance of this question is revealed by taking a look at statistics. It is true that sickness figures in Germany have fallen slightly in recent years and at the time of writing have reached a satisfactory 4 per cent of employed persons.1 Nevertheless the costs of income maintenance are at a high level. Consequently, employers had to spend a total of almost 27 billion in 2001 for continued remuneration in case of sickness. In addition, the sickness benefit payment to be defrayed by the health insurance scheme amounted to almost another 8 billion.2
