No vacation, taking sick leave: The heavy price for parents stuck at home
About 54% of employees began the summer vacation without vacation days and were forced to fund 2.8 vacation days out of pocket in July — this is according to a check by "Oketz Ma'arachot" among about 10,000 pay slips. At the same time, there was a 15% jump in the use of sick days. The reason: unlike a vacation day, for the second and third day of illness, 50% of the salary is paid.
The directives of Operation "Lion's Roar" and the shutdown of educational institutions forced hundreds of thousands of parents to stay in their homes, even when their workplace was fortified and they were required to supervise their children. Since emergency absence is usually not paid, employees found themselves struggling to prevent damage to their income and were forced to empty their vacation days or enter a negative balance with the employer's approval. The scope of the phenomenon was revealed in an analysis conducted by the company Oketz Ma'arachot on 9,923 pay slips from the beginning of July, which indicates that more than half of the employees (53.7%) were left without accrued vacation days.
It should be mentioned that the unpaid leave (HALAT) outline was approved in the Knesset at the end of March 2026, with retroactive effect from February 28. Eligibility was initially conditioned on at least 10 consecutive days of unpaid leave and a qualifying period of six months of insurance out of 18; later, the condition for the duration of unpaid leave was shortened to 5 days. The outline was intended for those who were placed on unpaid leave, and did not regulate salary payment for each absence as such. Since there was no general obligation to pay salary for absence due to the security situation, employers were allowed, subject to vacation laws, to charge the absence against accrued vacation days, thereby preventing immediate damage to the salary.
In the public sector, understandings were formulated between the Histadrut and the Wage Commissioner at the Ministry of Finance regarding absences from February 28 to March 31, 2026: the employer participated in the salary payment, the balance of the absence was charged to the vacation quota, and the possibility of entering a negative vacation balance up to a ceiling set in the agreement was established. Outside of such a dedicated arrangement, the employer has no authority to force an employee into a negative vacation balance without their consent.
The Annual Leave Law, 1951, regulates the right of employees in Israel to paid leave. The scope of eligibility is determined mainly by seniority: in the first five years, 16 gross days per year; in the sixth, 18; in the seventh, 21; and from the eighth year, one day is added for each year of work, up to a ceiling of 28 days. Until the end of 2016, the quota in the first four years stood at 14 days, and Amendment No. 15 increased it in two stages. The gross number includes one weekly rest day for every seven vacation days, so in practice, 16 gross days are 14 working days in a six-day week and 12 in a five-day week. Putting an employee into a negative balance looks like a technical solution, but in practice, it transfers the cost to them: a vacation day is a right with monetary value, and it is burned at a time forced by circumstances and not chosen by the employee.
Regarding sick days — according to the default in the Sick Pay Law, and assuming the employee has an accrued balance of sick days, the first day of absence does not entitle to payment; for the second and third day, sick pay is paid at a rate of 50% of the salary. This year, the shortage of vacation days led to a prominent trend: last July, a 15% increase in the use of sick days among parents was recorded compared to the average of the last 5 years.
According to Haim Molcho, CEO of Oketz Ma'arachot, which provides technological solutions for employee management, including payroll, attendance clocks, and pension systems:
"Ahead of the next campaign, it is mandatory to draw lessons and solve the absurdity where working parents fall between the chairs. Today, parents are protected from dismissal but remain without salary and are not entitled to unemployment benefits, while the negative vacation solution remains cumbersome and requires individual consent from each employee. The systemic solution requires four actions: setting an independent unpaid leave cause for parents, regulating negative vacation rules in an extension order, providing indemnification to employers for pension contributions due to emergency absence. In addition, the state must find a financial compensation mechanism for parents who were absent due to the closure of educational institutions, so that they do not bear alone the cost of a decision made at the national level."
