Employers urged to protect workers via the UIF
THE lack of compliance by employers to the labour laws, particularly the Unemployment Insurance Act, robs millions of workers of unemployment benefits.
According to the recently released Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey, unemployment has climbed to 34.4%, with 8 000 more people joining the ranks of the unemployed in the first quarter of the year.
The Unemployment Insurance Amendment Act of 2016 enjoins all employers to register with the UIF once they employ a person who works more than 24 hours a month, except public officials holding positions in Parliament, provincial executive councils and municipal councillors.
Under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, an employer must issue employment terms for an employee and register themselves and their employees for UIF, Pay As You Earn, and the Compensation Fund.
For UIF, it is critical that a relationship between an employer and a worker is confirmed through registration. The confirmation is critical because the status of a worker changes and the employer/employee relationship then exists for UIF purposes.
Uninsured workers are deprived of the UIF benefits, among them short work time, maternity, illness, adoption, death, and the recently established emergency relief benefits of Covid-19 Temporary Employer/ Employee Relief Scheme (Covid-19 Ters), as well as Workers Affected By the Unrest (Wabu): Temporary Financial Relief Scheme.
The UIF also offers training initiatives under the Labour Activation Programmes that provide training and re-skilling opportunities to unemployed former UIF contributors.
Usually, a worker who tries to access UIF benefits must be registered and contribute to the fund every month. The Act also requires employers to declare employees by the seventh day of every month.
However, some register their employees but fail to pay monthly contributions; those who have registered them and make monthly contributions fail to declare them every month; and employers such as taxi operators, domestic employers and those operating small businesses fail to register their employees.
This is to the detriment of workers as they are unable to access UIF benefits when they lose their jobs, go on maternity leave or parental leave, or lose a bread winner.
The Covid-19 Ters benefit has exposed large-scale non-compliance. .
Therefore, social partners at Nedlac and the Department of Employment and Labour agreed that Covid-19 Ters should cover all workers affected by the lockdown, as long as their employers register or are registered with the UIF. This resulted in many unregistered employers rushing to register and, most significantly, the number of registered employees grew exponentially.
On average UIF would register 66 000 employees a month, however, last year, in April the number rose to 85 000, shot up to 125 000 in May and dropped to 100 000 in June.
During the same period, declarations increased from 54 203 in April to 72 076 in June last year. The sudden increase in employer registration and employee declarations was due to a pre-condition that Covid-19 Ters claims would be processed and paid only upon verification of registration and declarations with the UIF. The same pre-condition will also be applied in the verification of claims for the Wabus relief scheme targeting KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
Despite improvements, many employees remain undeclared with the UIF because many online claims for unemployment benefit are stuck in the system, waiting for declarations from employers. This has also been the problem with Covid-19 Ters.
.The fund has created online platforms such as uFiling and EDEC systems to make it easy for employers to declare their employees. A digital UI 19 system was created on the Covid19 Ters portal to allow declarations from one to 1 000 employees. Employers are encouraged to declare foreign nationals on uFiling as it is the only platform that recognises other forms of identification in addition to the 13 digits by IDs.
As the fund, we appeal to all employers to register, contribute and declare their employees every month. The monthly premium is a mere 2% split from the employer and employee.
Through Covid-19 Ters, the UIF has paid more than R62.3 billion to 267 493 compliant employers, covering more than 5.4 million employees.
The fund is processing claims for the Wabu relief scheme. Again, we would like to see more employees benefit without being prejudiced by lack of compliance to the Unemployment Insurance Act as well as the Unemployment Insurance Contributions Act.