Workers who are on sick leave due to temporary disability and begin to approach 24 months of sick leave, which is the maximum duration allowed by law, worry because they do not know if their permanent disability will be recognized. As a general rule, it is 545 days (18 months), but with the exception it is allowed to extend it up to 730 days when the medical process still does not allow the real extent of the consequences to be assessed and improvement is expected. During this extension, the benefit continues to reach the worker’s account.
Now, you must know that, after 18 months, the company stops contributing and it is Social Security or the mutual insurance company that supports the subsidy until there is a resolution. This is established in article 169 of the General Social Security Law. In this sense, the specialized law firm Campmany Abogados explains that only when Social Security doctors consider that the clinical picture does not allow a definitive assessment, for example, after a recent surgery or during active rehabilitation, is the extension of six additional months activated.
For this reason, reaching 24 months does not guarantee anything. Labor lawyer Víctor Arpa explains that when the deadline expires, Social Security opens a brief dilemma: “Two things happen: either they give you permanent disability or they give you a medical discharge to return to your job,” summarizes the lawyer. There is no third administrative exit.
The decision criterion has nothing to do with the duration of the leave. For the lawyer, what weighs in the assessment are “your real consequences, what you can or cannot do, your work and your evolution.” Before resolving, the applicant goes through the Disability Assessment Team (EVI), known as the medical tribunal, “and everything is decided there.”
Hence, two people with identical sick leave periods may receive opposite responses. According to the percentages set by the General Social Security Law, if the recognized degree is total permanent disability, the interested party will collect 55% of their regulatory base, while if the court assesses absolute or great disability, the percentage rises to 100%.
The business contribution is cut from month 18
Upon completion of 18 months of sick leave, the company no longer has the obligation to contribute to Social Security for the worker. Many believe that this change is a dismissal, but this is not the case, since the law itself classifies this situation as a suspension of the contract (article 45.1.c of the Workers’ Statute), not as an termination. The business contribution is only reactivated when the worker is discharged and returns to his or her position.
That is why Campmany Abogados explains that “from 18 to 24 months of sick leave, the employer stops paying your Social Security contribution”, the contract is suspended and the contribution obligation returns only if the worker is discharged and reinstates.
From that moment on, the Social Security or mutual insurance company pays directly, depending on the contingency that caused the withdrawal. And if at the end of 24 months there is no resolution, there is no cut of the subsidy either, because the administrative delays are not attributed to the worker and the payment is maintained until Social Security makes a ruling.