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CLA backtracks on extending benefits

Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) yesterday appeared to backtrack on plans to extend the period during which the unemployed may receive benefits.

With the jobless rate surging, the council has been under pressure to revise the Employment Insurance Act (就業保險法) to extend unemployment benefits from six months to one year — one of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) campaign promises.

During a question-and-answer session at the legislature last Friday, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) told lawmakers the Cabinet would announce its position on the matter by today.

But at a press conference yesterday after the Cabinet’s weekly meeting, Wang said that Liu had promised to discuss how to make unemployment benefits more comprehensive and not to make a decision on extending the period.

Wang said the Cabinet would refer its draft amendment to the Act to the legislature by today so it could be reviewed alongside the version jointly proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators in January.

While refusing to give a direct answer, Wang suggested that the proposal to extend unemployment benefits to nine months or a year was inappropriate at present.

But middle-aged unemployed workers may soon qualify for up to nine months of benefits if lawmakers pass a separate amendment that is already out of its legislative committee, Wang said.

Ma’s election promise was not to extend unemployment benefits to one year, but to establish a system of criteria that would determine when the government can offer extended benefits based on economic conditions, she said.

“Once this system [of criteria] is created, the campaign promise will have been met. The CLA will make it happen within Ma’s four-year presidential term,” Wang said.

The jobless rate, the total unemployed population and the average number of weeks a person remains unemployed must be factored in to the period of unemployment benefits, Wang said.

She said that in 1992, an unemployed worker remained jobless for an average period of 32.44 weeks, and there were 105,000 people out of work.

“Now the average jobless period is 26.07 weeks and the unemployed population is 87,000,” she said.

Wang said the government would also study the systems for unemployment benefits in South Korea and Japan.
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