If the government introduces covid testing at the expense of employers, empty counters with pastries await us – TVNOVINY.sk

Bakers, confectioners and pastors reject the government’s proposal to test employees at their own expense. In the case of bakeries, which belong to the critical infrastructure, the costs would be in the hundreds of thousands of euros per month.

Milan Lapšanský, the executive director of the Slovak Association of Bakers, Confectioners and Travelers, claims this and called on the government to provide a system for testing employees at state expense or to find a quick and easy way to compensate testing costs for employers.

According to him, bakers who were excluded during the first and second waves of the pandemic from any aid could not bear these costs and would have to suspend production or drastically increase their sales prices again.

Illustration image. Photo: TASR / AP

“The government is transferring state responsibility to employers. In the case of bakers, it was not able to propose compensatory measures in more than a year and during the tenure of the two agriculture ministers. He is now preparing to introduce a new test tax for employers. Bakers are in an economic situation that simply does not allow them to increase costs by hundreds of thousands of euros a month. They have concluded contracts with customers and traders do not want to open them. The government must realize that it simply cannot create new costs from week to week without any compensation, “he stressed.

Bakeries are subjects of economic mobilization, as they have a duty to ensure the supply of strategic food – bread and pastries to the country’s population. However, they need a critical mass of employees for this. “Given the current COVID machine and the Prime Minister’s statement that the cost of testing will have to be borne by employers, they would have to test employees at least every other day,” he said.

How much would it cost to test one bakery

According to the union, one medium-sized industrial bakery would cost € 3,000 per antigen test and up to € 15,000 per PCR test. It would be about 200,000 euros per month for one such bakery.

“With enormous pressure to increase the price of products due to rising prices of all inputs from raw materials, energy, packaging, services to the price of labor, they would not even be able to cover production costs. If the government approves this regulation without a functioning compensation mechanism, it will sign under empty bread and pastry counters throughout Slovakia, “Lapšanský added.