No sick leave for sports injuries? – Get stuffed!

Uninformed. Short-sighted. A slap in the face of people who care about their own health.

This is how sports professionals described the Malta Employers’ Association’s recent proposal that people suffering from a sports injury should not be entitled to sick leave, even if they are certified as unfit for work by their own doctor.

This proposal was only one of several of the MEA’s proposed amendments to the Employment and Industrial Relations Act but it immediately stood out for the way it described sports injuries as something ‘self-inflicted’.

Adding insult to injury (pun very much intended), it was crudely lumped together with some obviously self-inflicted reasons for calling in sick, such as drunkenness and hangovers.

The General Workers Union and the Union Haddiema Maghqudin were quick to attack this proposal, and the Forum Unions Maltin went as far as to say that it “goes against the basic rights of employees”. On Friday, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat described this proposal as “draconian”.

People quickly took to the social media to point out that the only thing ‘self-inflicted’ about a sports injury is that person’s decision to take part in a sport in the first place. Are the MEA really suggesting that they would rather have unfit and unhealthy employees than risk having to pay them on the rare occasions that they suffer a sports injury? Draconian indeed.

MaltaToday asked four sports professionals to weigh in on the debate. 

Adele Muscat, sports psychologist for the Malta Football Association, took issue with the MEA’s casual description of sports injuries as ‘self-inflicted’. “No person who practises sport regularly wants to get injured,” she said. 

“People in sports cannot sit still for long anyway so they will take the least sick leave possible so as not to stay at home doing nothing.

“Obese people, smokers and alcohol abusers take loads of sick leave as a result of illnesses brought about by their lack of health.”

Muscat added that the MEA were denying healthy sportspeople the right to the same treatment on the rare occasions that they suffer a sports injury. “What message does that send out?” she asked.

Mark Camilleri, a doctor who specializes in sports medicine, also described the MEA proposal as “short-sighted and uninformed”.

“Employers should know that an active employee is usually a healthier, more energetic, happier employee,” Camilleri said.

He added that “people who exercise regularly have been proven to be at a lower risk for colds and back pains, two major causes of sick leave.”

Alex Attard Littschwager is a swim coach and plays water polo for the national team. He said that sport plays an important role in the development of character and self-discipline. “Employees who practise sport will therefore benefit their employers in terms of enhanced production and motivation.”

John Xerri de Caro, a physiotherapy lecturer at the University of Malta, also disagreed with the MEA’s proposal on the basis that exercise and a healthy lifestyle are preventative measure for many chronic diseases.

However, he also raised an interesting point.

“An employer should not give sick leave to employees who sustain an injury when playing a sport for which they are paid and which is not their primary job,” Xerri de Caro said. 

That would mean that employers of footballers in the Premier Division need no longer hold their wallets in anxiety for every sliding tackle and shoulder barge.