At the conference to collect comments on the Employment Law project (amended) organized by the Ho Chi Minh City Labor Confederation, Mr. Tran Anh Kiet, Chairman of the Trade Union of Hitachi Zosen Vietnam Co., Ltd., proposed advanced research. unemployment benefit levels for workers.
Currently, the monthly unemployment benefit is equal to 60% of the average monthly salary unemployment insurance for the 6 months immediately preceding unemployment. Mr. Kiet proposed increasing it to 70%.
According to Mr. Kiet, the employee’s insurance salary is often lower than the actual income, but the unemployment benefit is only 60% of the premium. ensure a normal life during periods of unemployment, travel, look for jobs, learn skills to improve skills to meet new jobs…
Report on the situation of unemployment benefits in the first quarter of 2024 of China Ho Chi Minh City Employment Service Center also shows that the lowest unemployment benefit that workers receive is 1,836,000 VND/month. This is too little money to ensure the life of an individual in Ho Chi Minh City, let alone their family.
On average, each unemployed person in Ho Chi Minh City receives 6,194,796 VND/month. This level is also quite low compared to the average income of 95 million VND/month for workers in the Southeast region in the first quarter of 2024.
In fact, in Ho Chi Minh City, there are many unemployed workers receiving very high unemployment benefits. In the first quarter of 2024, workers have the highest unemployment benefit of 23,400,000 VND/month. Thus, if they are entitled to maximum unemployment benefits for 12 months, these workers can receive 280,800,000 VND in unemployment benefits.
Those with this high benefit are all salaried workers. higher than 39 million VND/month. Because the maximum unemployment benefit is stipulated to be no more than 5 times the regional minimum wage, employees are only entitled to a maximum of 23,400,000 VND/month (the highest minimum wage is region 1 at 4,680,000 VND/month). month). If there were no maximum regulation, many workers who lost their jobs would still receive higher unemployment benefits.
However, such high benefits are only available to a portion of high-paid workers, while the majority are still workers whose unemployment insurance salary is lower than the average income. This is the main group of workers that the policy needs to support.
According to Mr. Tran Van Trieu, Director of the Legal Consulting Center of Ho Chi Minh City Federation of Labor, unemployment insurance operates on the principle of sharing. Only those who lose their jobs can receive it, and there are people who have never received it their whole working life. Therefore, it is necessary to research the appropriate level of support to share the financial burden for workers during the period of job loss.
Mr. Tran Anh Kiet said that the current unemployment insurance policy still has many shortcomings that need to be must be resolved when drafting the (amended) Employment Law to become a solid fulcrum in life for workers.
