This May 1, 2022 marks one more year of the Labor Daya date that finds Dominican collaborators in the midst of great challenges, including achieving the modernization of the Dominican Labor Code and a Social Security Law, where labor rights and benefits are not harmed.
Luis Miguel De Campsminister of Workedwhen participating in Dialogo Libre, of the Diario Libre group, assured that in his management he has tried to produce dialogues, through which they have achieved results.
He explained that to date we can already speak of 15 salary increases and adjustments in the private sector, “each and every one of them with the achievement of consensus. Respecting the differences, legitimate interests, but all the actors have been able to behave at the height of the circumstances and have been able to collaborate within their possibilities so that these consensuses are produced”.
He added that the Ministry is committed to achieving improvements for workers without affecting the capacity to produce jobs.
“Last year we also achieved understandings that allowed improvements in rates for procedures for doctors in the field of Social Security, at the same time that we achieved compliance with the law regarding the adjustment of the capitation, but also accompanied by the inclusion of new services for workers such as breast reconstruction due to cancer that did not have Social Security coverage before,” explained the official.
In the same direction, De Camps said that the ability or possibility of having health coverage for preventive prophylactic mastectomy has been achieved, also including white blood tests to determine the genetic propensities of suffering from breast cancer.
“All this was excluded from Social Security coverage for workers and thanks to these dialogues and agreements, they were included. Comprehensive renal transplant stress was also included. Previously it was only included to place the organ to who was going to receive the new kidney. But donor removal and pre- and post-treatment are also included,” he explained. Luis Miguel De Camps.
Employment and unemployment
De Camps explained that when he assumed the leadership of the Ministry of Worked the world was in the worst moment of the pandemic, where, at the time, there were close to 400,000 workers furloughed or who had lost their jobs in the country. “All those workers who were out were able to recover in September 2021 and by the end of 2021, compared to December 2020 and December 2021, unemployment had dropped from 7.4% to 7.1%. Unemployment is currently hovering around 7%.
He said that in recent months there has been an increase in the number of jobs. In this year 2022 alone, according to data from the Social Security Treasury, “in January there was a total of 2.2 million, in February 2.3 and already in March it exceeded 2.3, that is, the number of formal jobs that have materialized continue to increase.”
“Not only were all formal jobs in the private sector recovered in September 2021, but by the end of 2021, formal jobs in the private sector would be increased and exceeded by nearly 60,000 those that existed before the pandemic in February 2021. 2020. And the path of investment growth and recovery is maintained”, said De Camps.
Informality
He revealed that as an authority what he is looking for to facilitate the growth of formal employment or formalization, is to educate, on the one hand, but also to expand the benefits of Social Security because many times the citizens or some part of the workers may not know in its fair dimension all the benefits that Social Security has and this is achieved through formalization.
“The challenge of informality that actually exists in the Dominican Republic is a regional reality, if you will, and it is one of the most important. When we see this, we have to see what the current reality is and what the future of work is”Minister of Labor
They study the Dominican labor market
the minister of Worked, Luis Miguel De Campssaid that they are currently working not only with the construction sector, but also with the agricultural sector to facilitate the registration and monitoring mechanisms for workers, because the information systems that exist in Social Security have been designed under the scheme of a single employer, a single worker “and it is not necessarily so”.
“That has made it difficult for a person who has multiple employers to be able to register with each one of them and have each of them pay their part and portion because, obviously, it is not a worked of 23.83 days per month, but a worked of X amount of days or hours. There we have a challenge and we are working both with the associations of the construction and agricultural sectors, the Ministry of WorkedTreasury of the Social Security to facilitate that”.
He said that in this way what they want is that not only each employer, but each worker can contribute what corresponds to him, no more, no less; facilitating sustainability.
It warns that labor rights are not subject to immigration status because they are fundamental rights. Therefore, the Ministry of Worked has the obligation to ensure respect for labor rights regardless of immigration status.
“We have to look for the formalization of work and for the formalization of work it is necessary to be, obviously, on a regular basis”Minister of Labor
He revealed that the National Migration Council, of which the Ministry of Worked is part of, is working and is in the final stages of a plan in which it will be possible to help the reality of the workers to be registered and known in the country.
“This is not a regularization plan, I want to say it very clearly so that there are no misinterpretations. This is a plan that, at the time, the National Migration Council will have to make known”, he pointed out.
He assured that the intention is to know what the reality of the formal and informal labor market is to help put the house in order.
He said that this uprising is being carried out by the institutions that are part of the National Migration Council, which is chaired by the Ministry of the Interior and Police. It is also made up of the Ministries of Agriculture, Foreign Affairs, and Public Health, among others.
