The Government enlarges Wage Guarantee Fund to more workers in companies in recuperation
The Executive is going to reconsider the validity of part of the requests that were refused. From outside will continue the workers who never made the request or the ones that made it before September 2012.
The government has given into some demands of its social partners and decided to enlarge the universe of workers having access to the Social Guarantee Fund (FGS). Every request delivered before 2012 by workers in Special Process of Revitalization or with insolvency plans – regardless the contract has ended or not – will be reconsidered by Social Security. This enlargement is predicted in a legislative proposal that changes the FGS and that will be discussed this Tuesday in the Permanent Commission for Social Dialogue.
However, not every demand were satisfied, since the transitory order do not include all workers that have been away of the funding support, since the Government do not accepted the proposal that enlarged the fund to workers of companies in PER or with insolvency plans, whose intervention requests were never formalized.
At stake will be, according with the valuations presented by the executive in October, more than 30 million persons and an expenditure of 66 million euros. That is why the Government considered it a proposal that “do not present budget viability”.
The preliminary draft of the Decree-law to which PÚBLICO have access foresees that all the present requests referring to PER (framework in force since 2012) that have been refused will be evaluated again. At stake will be 2475 workers and late credits (wages, subventions, compensations for dismissal) of 14,9 million euros. The same will happen to requests delivered between 1st September 2012 and the date of force of the new rules, by workers included in insolvency plans.
Contrary to what provided the initial version of the certificate that only included fired workers and forbade the transitory norm to workers that maintain the bond with the company, in the new version there is no distinction. This is going to transform the universe of workers, initially estimated by the Government in 5169, to be enlarged, as well as the expenditure to pay, which goes beyond 30 million euros.
Therefore, the Government responds to the situations of workers in companies in recuperation that had late wages and couldn’t use FGS because the legal framework never was adapted to the new mechanism of company viability.
Employment and Social Security Ministry also changed the subrogation of credits framework when the goods of the insolvent part are not enough to pay the debts of the company. In a first version, FGS had priority regarding workers, an option very criticized by CGTP and UGT. In the new version, it was elaborated a rule of credit recuperation in which the fund and the workers stay in equality positions.
The article related to credits also suffers a change and it is only predicted the deduction of discounts to Social Security and the IRS of worker responsibility, disappearing the paragraph that predicted the deduction of unemployment subvention to the paid amount by FGS to the worker paid between the dismissal date and till the court decision about the illegality of the dismissal. The proposal creates a debt framework, that isn’t predicted now, establishing a set of norms that regulates the employer debt and the regulation procedure.
In the meeting of this Tuesday, that will be presided by the minister Pedro Mota Soares will be approached proposals of social partners for the change of funds that pay part of the compensations to workers in case of dismissal. One of the proposals with most relevant impact comes from the employers that want to exclude the Work Compensation Fund (FCT) and Guarantee Fund for the Work Compensation (FGCT) the contracts till three months celebrated with companies of temporary work.
The minister will also present a balance of the measure that aims to compensate the unemployed that accept to work for a wage inferior to the subvention. As PÚBLICO published, the report elaborated by Employment and Professional Training Institute reveals that from the 23 thousand of potential beneficiaries, the measure only included 319. Mota Soares announced that is going to propose the reduction of six to three months of unemployment needed time so it can be possible to accumulate wage as a part of unemployment subvention aiming to increase the number of affected persons.
Source: Público