Sick leave boon for private sleuth's business

Rising sick leave rates may be bad news for German companies at a time the economy is already ailing - but for private eye Marcus Lentz, it has been a boon for his business.

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He is seeing a record number of requests from firms for his agency to check up on employees suspected of calling in sick when they are fit to work.

"There are just more and more companies that don't want to put up with it any more," he said, adding his Lentz Group was receiving up to 1200 such requests annually, around double the figure from a few years earlier.

"If someone has 30, 40 or sometimes up to 100 sick days in a year, then, at some point, they become economically unattractive for the employer," he said.

From auto titans to fertiliser producers, companies are ringing the alarm about the impact of high rates of sick leave on Europe's biggest economy.