Government announces December Covid bonus and expands law to suspend jobs

They have been turning the initiative around for a long time and finally this Friday President Sebastián Piñera announced that he will deliver a new voucher in December for the families that were benefited with the last payment of the Emergency Family Income (IFE). This announcement was made while in Congress the opposition and the government were leading the last negotiations in the mixed commission to dispatch the 2021 Budget project.

As part of a visit to a company that has benefited from the employment subsidy program, the President announced the “Covid Christmas Bonus”, a benefit consisting of $ 25,000 for each member of the households that have received the sixth IFE and of $ 55,000 for each member of a family that is in a commune that has been in quarantine during the last 7 days. The benefits are exclusive, they are not added, explained from the Ministry of Social Development.

According to calculations by La Moneda, the initiative would benefit some 3.4 million families, covering some 8.3 million people, and would cost close to US $ 300 million.

The materialization of the bond will be formalized as an indication to the Budget project that should be dispatched before Sunday from Congress to comply with the legal deadline.

It should be remembered that on Wednesday night the Ministry of Finance sent indication 571 to the Public Treasury, which together with the quarantine IFE that Minister Ignacio Briones announced at midnight, incorporated a new supplement. Letter B of the indication mentioned the delivery in December of a new contribution to the beneficiaries of the sixth payment, which would amount to “$ 25,000 for each member of the household, according to the IFE’s list of beneficiaries. Said bond would be available to pay 10 days after the law was published ”.

Later, this gloss was withdrawn and replaced only by the IFE quarantine, and yesterday the President specified the idea.

Along the same lines, a few hours before Minister Briones made another announcement: that the Employment Protection Law would extend from January to March. Thus, companies will be able to maintain or implement the suspension of their workers’ contracts until March of next year, triggering the use of unemployment insurance for the payment of a proportion of wages.

“We want to aspire as much as possible to that vehicle that has been tremendously successful in protecting employment,” Briones said in Congress, before starting the negotiation of the mixed.

Likewise, he stated that the power to agree to a reduction in working hours will be a measure that will extend throughout 2021. “We know that the unemployment rate is high and we have to use all the instruments so that the greatest number of people return to work. their jobs, “he said, recalling that in recent months” hundreds of thousands “have recovered jobs for many workers who were suspended, reducing layoffs.

A total of 211,704 subsidies to boost employment have been delivered by the State as of November 26. Of these, 40% correspond to the Regresa line to finance the return of suspended contracts, and 60% have financed new contracts. In sum, both programs have financed the return to work of 45,278 women and 80,760 men.