Teachers from private schools around the country are planning to take to the streets on Sunday to demand coverage under the national labor insurance system, said the National Teachers’ Association.
Association president Liu Chin-hsu (劉欽旭) said yesterday that private school teachers have decided to stage a demonstration against the government’s failure to include them in the national labor insurance system as proposed.
About 10,000 presidents, teachers and employees of private schools around the country are expected to join the protest, Liu said.
In June last year, the Legislative Yuan approved a retirement plan for private school teachers featuring the creation of movable savings accounts and inclusion in the labor insurance system. It also passed a resolution that an amendment to the law should be completed within six months to implement the initiative.
Currently, private school teachers are covered under the civil service pension system and the private school reserve fund system, while other workers are part of labor pension and labor insurance systems.
However, the government has not yet decided whether private school teachers should remain in the civil servant pension plan or be transferred to the labor insurance scheme.
Liu said if private school employees choose to remain in the civil servant retirement system and wish to qualify for monthly retirement benefits, they would have to make retroactive premium payments of about NT$2,000 (US$63) a month to cover their previous years of service.
If they lose their jobs, they would not be eligible to receive unemployment benefits, Liu added.
Under the labor pension system, those who have served for more than 15 years would have the option of a one-time lump sum payment, monthly payments or a partial lump-sum payment and lower monthly benefits, he said.
At present, there are 63,000 private school teachers in the country who have worked an average of 12 years, he said. If all of them contribute to the labor retirement pension scheme, an estimated NT$14.6 billion would be added to the Labor Insurance Fund, Liu said.
Meanwhile, private school teachers hold shares of about NT$240,000 each in a reserve fund, compared to NT$29,000 per worker share in the labor reserve fund, Liu said. The inclusion of private school teachers in the labor insurance scheme would absolutely not put any financial burden on the system, he added.
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