SSS to provide unemployment benefits if Duterte approves it

The Senate and House bills also give authority to the Social Security System (SSS) to increase the members’ contribution rate from 11 percent of one’s salary to 12 percent in 2019.

Members of the Social Security System (SSS) who are retrenched or fired from their job will get up to two months’ worth of their salary if a bill mandating it is signed into law.

Senate Bill 1753 and House Bill 2158, or the Social Security Act of 2018, will also authorize SSS to review and revise the members’ contribution rate which, at present, is 11 percent of their salary.

The bicameral conference committee approved the measure last month and the bicam-approved bill is awaiting approval by President Rodrigo Duterte.

Lawyer Emmanuel Dooc, SSS president and chief executive officer, said one of the provisions of the proposed law grants unemployment benefits to SSS members who involuntarily lose their job.

Qualified employees who lose their job will receive 50 percent of their average monthly salary for up to two months. This means that if a worker earns P10,000 a month, the unemployment benefit is up to P10,000 for the two months.

“We expect that in two months, the worker would try hard to find a new job and not rely on the unemployment benefit,” Dooc said in Tagalog during a press conference at the SSS office in Cebu City on Friday, Nov. 16.

The unemployment benefit is one of the required benefits of the International Social Security Association, which is already being implemented in progressive countries.

The other required benefits are death, sickness, funeral, disability, maternity and pension. Dooc said the SSS cannot grant yet the eighth required benefit, which is the children’s and family allowance.

The proposed law also empowers the SSS to increase to 12 percent the members’ contribution rate in 2019 and another increase every other year until the contribution rate reaches 15 percent.

Another provision requires that all overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are enrolled as members of SSS.

There are an estimated five to 10 million OFWs, but only 560,000 OFWs are SSS members, Dooc said.

If all OFWs become contributing members, he said that SSS contributions would increase and allow them to sustain all their programs and benefits.