The current wage talks have come around to the point where the labor representatives are concerned about a “counter-reformation” by management that wants to change the Labor Code. CNUS union president Pepe Abreu told Diario Libre reporters that “the companies want to avoid the accumulation of severance pay.”
In the Dominican Republic, severance pay is awarded when an employee is dismissed.
Abreu said that without these rigorous severance packages labor mobility would be even higher than at present.
He added that the management sector has said that the Social Security law already establishes unemployment insurance and they see that as a duplication of the severance payments.
However, Abreu wants to know where the funds for the unemployment insurance are, recalling that when Milton Ray Guevara was Minister of Labor there was talk of this. Nonetheless, when the business leaders were asked if they were willing to fund the insurance, they realized that it would be even more costly than the severance packages.