To avoid the obligation of paying social insurance, some enterprises, when concluding a contract with employees, write explicit terms that employees don’t join the social insurance. Zheng Chaoyang, inspector of Human Resources and Social Security Department of Guangdong Province made it clear in an interview with The People’s Livelihood Hotline yesterday that it was invalid to write “voluntary surrender of social insurance” in the labor contract.

Guangdong Province recently launched “ten new articles on the real economy” to further reduce the cost of social insurance for enterprises, including promoting provincial pooling of pension insurance across the province and implementing a unified contribution rate of pension insurance for enterprises. Those who pay for more than 14% will just pay 14%. The new articles also reasonably determine the upper and lower limits of enterprises’ payment base of pension insurance, enabling them to gradually transit the contribution rate to a unified standard across the province. Besides, Guangdong requires those areas with mature conditions to further reduce the contribution rate of medical insurance and maternity insurance, and establishes a sound floating management system for work-related injury insurance rate to reduce the average premium rate for work-related injuries insurance in the province by 20% to 30%.

According to Zheng Chaoyang, Guangdong Province has achieved provincial pooling of pension insurance since July 1 last year, and the contribution rates of pension insurance in all cities across the province are gradually getting close to 14%. At present, the contribution rate for five types of insurance in Guangdong adds up to about 23% for enterprises, the lowest in China. On that basis, he said, there is room for further declines in medical insurance and work-related injury insurance.

Zheng Chaoyang also pointed out that after comprehensive implementation of the second-child policy, maternity insurance fund may experience tension. The reason is that when maternity insurance system was initially formulated, it was designed based on the one-child policy. China is also paying attention to this problem, which is believed will be fundamentally solved by the combination of medical insurance and maternity insurance.

(Source: Southern Metropolis Daily)