Unemployment Fund Director Decries Government Back-Pedaling
The director of the Unemployment Insurance Fund says nothing remains of an understanding reached between the government, employers and employees' representatives when the Employment Contracts Act was revised during the economic downturn.
The government plans to withdraw from a pledge to also pay insurance benefits to those who leave a job voluntarily. The measure was originally intended to support flexibility and upward mobility in the workforce. It also addressed the fact that in fact some of the voluntary departures are actually layoffs in disguise.
"The current process has not been a case of three parties deciding, 'very well, let's do that,'" said Meelis Paavel on uudised.err.ee.
The Legal Affairs Committee introduced a bill recently that scraps the plan for the Fund to start paying 40 percent of their previous salary to employees who leave of their own accord or amicably.
"One reason that such an option was included in the legislation was that the share of those who left a job voluntarily or with mutual agreement and came straight to [the Unemployment Insurance Fund office] in search of a job was high - around one-third," said Paavel. "It is still around that level."
The Cabinet has said that distributing compensation to everyone should not be a way of combating lack of legal regulation. Prime Minister Andrus Ansip has backed a case-by-case approach. "If equality is violated in labor relations, the aim should be to allow justice and legality to triumph, not try to throw money at the problem," he was quoted by uudised.err.ee.
Kristopher Rikken