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Government receives ‘dagpenge’ recommendations

Christian Wenande
October 20th, 2015


This article is more than 9 years old.

The hope is that fewer people will exhaust their right to unemployment insurance benefits

Uncertainty over unemployment insurance benefits (dagpenge) in Denmark could finally be resolved as the commission looking into the issue, Dagpengekommissionen, has handed over its recommendations to the government.

Dagpengekommissionen evaluates that its recommendations would lead to fewer people in the future exhausting their right to dagpenge without weakening employment or the state coffers.

“It hasn’t been an easy task to ransack the over 100-year-old and complicated dagpenge system and produce recommendations for a new system,” said Jørn Neergaard Larsen, the employment minister.

“I’ve noted with pleasure that the commission has agreed that from the outset the dagpenge system will remain a two-year period and the re-earning requirement that the V-K government added in 2010 hasn’t been changed.”

READ MORE: More than 50,000 have now lost their insured unemployment benefits

Off your high horse
But Harald Børsting, the head of the union association LO, did not share the same enthusiasm for the recommendations – particularly the one that enable the unemployed to avoid two qualifying days each quarter if they work at least one week per month during the previous quarter.

So for instance, if they fail to work at least one week per month during one quarter, they will have to wait two days before the next quarter’s benefits kick in.

“We’ve asked ourselves: could it really be correct that workers, the insured unemployed and graduates should be alone in rectifying the crap they did in 2010,” Børsting told DR Nyheder. “We don’t think they should.”


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

Pill pushers
At the Børnehuset daycare institution in Silkeborg a meeting was called where parents were implored not to bring their sick children to school.

At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

Parents sick and tired
Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”