Employment Promotion and Protection Against Unemployment
Employment Promotion and Protection Against Unemployment : ILO Convention No. 168 (1988) aims at taking appropriate steps in each ILO Member State to coordinate its system of protection against unemployment and its employment policy. To this end, the Member State shall seek to ensure that its system of protection against unemployment, and in particular the methods of providing unemployment benefit, contribute to the promotion of full, productive and freely chosen employment, and are not such as to discourage employers from offering and workers from seeking productive employment. Each Member State shall also ensure equality of treatment for all persons protected, without discrimination on the basis of race, colour, sex, religion, political opinion, national extraction, nationality, ethnic or social origin, disability or age. In addition, each Member State shall declare as a priority objective a policy designed to promote full, productive and freely chosen employment by all appropriate means, including social security. Such means should include, inter alia, employment services, vocational training and vocational guidance. In so doing it shall endeavour to establish special programmes to promote additional job opportunities and employment assistance, and to encourage freely chosen and productive employment for identified categories of disadvantaged persons having or liable to have difficulties in finding lasting employment such as women, young workers, disabled persons, older workers, the long-term nemployed, migrant workers lawfully resident in the country and workers affected by structural change. This should be extended progressively to the promotion of productive employment for a greater number of categories than the number initially covered. As concerns the contingencies, they shall include: loss of earnings due to partial unemployment, defined as a temporary reduction in the normal or statutory hours of work; and suspension or reduction of earnings due to a temporary suspension of work,without any break in the employment relationship for reasons of, in particular, an economic, technological, structural or similar nature. Each ILO Member State shall in addition endeavour to provide the payment of benefits to part-time workers who are actually seeking full-time work. The total of benefits and earnings from their part-time work may be such as to maintain incentives to take up full-time work. According to Convention No. 168, each Member State may determine the method or methods of protection by which it chooses to put into effect them provisions of the Convention, whether by a contributory or non-contributory system, or by a combination of such systems. Nevertheless, if the legislation of a Member State protects all residents whose resources, during the contingency, do not exceed prescribed limits, the protection afforded may be limited, in the light of the resources of the beneficiary and his/her family. Benefits provided in the form of periodical payments to the unemployed may be related to the methods of protection. In cases of full unemployment, benefits shall be provided in the form of periodical payments calculated in such a way as to provide the beneficiary with partial and transitional wage replacement and, at the same time, to avoid creating disincentives either to work or to employment creation. In cases of full unemployment and suspension of earnings due to a temporary suspension of work without any break in the employment relationship, when this contingency is covered, benefits shall be provided in the form of periodical payments, calculated as follows: where these benefits are based on the contributions of or on behalf of the person protected or on previous earnings, they shall be fixed at not less than 50 per cent of previous earnings, it being permitted to fix a maximum for the amount of the benefit or for the earnings to be taken into account, which may be related, for example, to the wage of a skilled manual employee or to the average wage of workers in the region concerned; where such benefits are not based on contributions or previous earnings, they shall be fixed at not less than 50 per cent of the statutory minimum wage or of the wage of an ordinary labourer, or at a level which provides the minimum essential for basic living expenses, whichever is the highest. In the case where the legislation of a Member State makes the right to unemployment benefit conditional upon the completion of a qualifying period, this period shall not exceed the length deemed necessary to prevent abuse. Moreover, it shall endeavour to adapt the qualifying period to the occupational circumstances of seasonal workers. If the legislation of a Member State provides that the payment of benefit in cases of full unemployment should begin only after the expiry of a waiting period, such period shall not exceed seven days. The benefits provided in cases of full unemployment and suspension of earnings due to a temporary suspension of work without any break in the employment relationship shall be paid throughout these contingencies. Nevertheless, in the case of full unemployment: the initial duration of payment of the benefit provided for in Article 15 of the Convention may be limited to 26 weeks in each spell of unemployment, or to 39 weeks over any period of 24 months; in the event of unemployment continuing beyond this initial period of benefit, the duration of payment of benefit, which may be calculated in the light of the resources of the beneficiary and his/her family in accordance with the provisions of Article 16 of the Convention, may be limited to a prescribed period. The benefit to which a protected person would have been entitled in the cases of full or partial unemployment or suspension of earnings due to a temporary suspension of work without any break in the employment relationship may be refused, withdrawn, suspended or reduced to the extent prescribed: (1) for as long as the person concerned is absent from the territory of the Member State; (2) when it has been determined by the competent authority that the person concerned had deliberately contributed to his/her own dismissal; (3) when it has been determined by the competent authority that the person concerned has left employment voluntarily without just cause; (4) during the period of a labour dispute, when the person concerned has stopped work to take part in a labour dispute or when he/she is prevented from working as a direct result of a stoppage of work due to this labour dispute; (5) when the person concerned has attempted to obtain or has obtained benefits fraudulently; (6) when the person concerned has failed without just cause to use the facilities available for placement, vocational guidance, training, retraining or redeployment in suitable work; (7) as long as the person concerned is in receipt of another income maintenance benefit provided for in the legislation of the Member State concerned, except a family benefit, provided that the part of the benefit which is suspended does not exceed that other benefit. When protected persons have received directly from their employer or from any other source under national laws or regulations or collective agreements, severance pay, the principal purpose of which is to contribute towards compensating them for the loss of earnings suffered in the event of full unemployment: (1) the unemployment benefit to which the persons concerned would be entitled may be suspended for a period corresponding to that during which the severance pay compensates for the loss of earnings suffered; or (2) the severance pay may be reduced by an amount corresponding to the value converted into a lump sum of the unemployment benefit to which the persons concerned are entitled for a period corresponding to that during which the severance pay compensates for the loss of earnings suffered, as each Member State may decide. There are special provisions for new applicants for employment. In this regard, Member States shall take account of the fact that there are many categories of persons seeking work who have never been, or have ceased to be, recognized as unemployed or have never been, or have ceased to be, covered by schemes for the protection of the unemployed. Consequently, at least three of the following ten categories of persons seeking work shall receive social benefits, in accordance with prescribed terms and conditions: young persons who have completed their vocational training; young persons who have completed their studies; young persons who have completed their compulsory military service; persons after a period devoted to bringing up a child or caring for someone who is sick, disabled or elderly; persons whose spouse has died, when they are not entitled to a survivor's benefit; divorced or separated persons; released prisoners; adults, including disabled persons, who have completed a period of training; migrant workers on return to their home country, except in so far as they have acquired rights under the legislation of the country where they last worked; previously self-employed persons. See: Employment; Employment General Principles; Employment policy; Unemployment
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