On April 24, in Ho Chi Minh City, the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor organized a competition to collect comments on the draft Law on Employment (amended). Nearly 100 union officials from the southern provinces and cities and the Vietnam Rubber Trade Union attended the conference.
According to the provisions of the draft, within 3 months from the date of termination of the labor contract, the employee must register for unemployment to receive unemployment benefits (TCTN).
To register and receive TCTN, employers are required to pay and close social insurance (SI) books for employees. However, in reality, many businesses are late in paying, not paying social insurance, unemployment insurance or for some reason are late in closing social insurance books for employees, so employees cannot register and receive TCTN in time.
Mr. Vu Ngoc Ha - Director of the Dong Nai Provincial Federation of Labor's Legal Consulting Center - said that in reality, there are many cases where enterprises terminate their labor contracts with employees, but do not close their social insurance books immediately, or go to close their social insurance books but encounter problems, so near the end or the end of the 3-month term, employees have not yet closed their social insurance books to complete unemployment registration procedures and will not be entitled to TCTN while they need money to live and find another job.
However, the draft does not stipulate that if the enterprise is slow to pay social insurance to employees, causing employees not to receive TCTN like that, it must compensate employees.
“In fact, in many cases, we have to make a warning of the enterprise if we do not close the social insurance book in time for employees to lead to employees who are not entitled to credit institutions, they will be sued and have to pay a compensation of an amount equivalent to the level of entitlement to the CIs that employees are entitled to. TCTN ”, Mr. Ha proposed.
Mr. Pham Van Hien - Legal Consulting Center of the Ho Chi Minh City Labor Federation - proposed that the time to register for unemployment after the end of the labor contract and work contract should be extended to 6 months instead of 3 months as in the draft. Because many businesses and units are currently behind schedule, owe social insurance and unemployment insurance, if they can make compensation to employees, the time will be extended, the procedures for closing social insurance and unemployment insurance books are delayed, so employees cannot register for unemployment in time to receive unemployment benefits.
Mr. Hien also recommended that it is necessary to gradually increase the TCTN benefit from 60% according to the number of years of contribution but not exceeding 75%, because the current regulation only raises it to 60%, not encouraging employees to participate in long-term unemployment insurance contributions.
