The Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) has completed the draft of the Law on Employment after it to opinions from ministries and branches and from the National Assembly's Committee for Social Affairs.  

The compilation agency proposed expanding the subjects for unemployment insurance and amendments of related policies.

The current Law on Employment stipulates support to employers, supporting them to train and upgrade workers’ professional knowledge and skills. However, after five years of implementation, no enterprise has received support because they could not satisfy the strict requirements set by the law.

Only when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in 2021 did the government release the policy on supporting workers and employers: 66 businesses got this kind of support, totaling VND38.87 billion.

MOLISA believes that it would be better to amend the current law, using the unemployment insurance fund to support tbusinesses which face difficulties for various reasons, including natural calamities, fires, enemy attacks or dangerous epidemics. 

The fund would also be used to support enterprises that have to implement decisions by state agencies requiring them to move to other places or scale down production and business bases.

The current scheme on supporting businesses to give training to upgrade professional skills is mostly applied to vocational training for those who have lose jobs. It is not applicable to workers who need to improve their skills.

The ministry has proposed providing support for training and skill upgrading of workers, and lunch allowances to workers who don’t enjoy unemployment allowances during the training time.

Resolution 28 of the Party Central Committee on social insurance policy reform sets the goal of having 45 percent of the working-age labor force participate in unemployment insurance. 

MOLISA has proposed adding some subjects to mandatory unemployment insurance, including workers signing labor contracts valid for one month or longer; and managers of businesses, controllers, and representatives of the state’s contributed capital as prescribed by the laws.

In addition, members of board of directors, CEOs, directors, members of supervisory councils and other management titles at cooperatives and unions of cooperatives as prescribed by the Law on Cooperatives also have to pay unemployment insurance premiums.

Vu Diep