In the vast majority of cases, workers who decide to leave their jobs do so assuming that they will lose the right to collect the unemployment benefit they have generated during previous years. Sometimes, this is a reason that justifies staying with the company despite, deep down, wanting the termination of their contract for various reasons.
However, the regulations contemplate some other exception in which the worker, when he voluntarily leaves his job, has the right to collect unemployment benefits. It will only happen in contract terminations at the will of the worker that are due to a breach of contract by the employer.
He makes it clear that these voluntary extinctions can only be due to:
-Substantial changes in working conditions (working day, schedule and distribution of working time, shift work regime, remuneration system and salary amount, work system and performance or functions).
-Non-payments or continued delays in the payment of salary.
-Other serious breaches of the employer (except in cases of force majeure) and the employer’s refusal to reinstate the worker in his job after rulings that declare unjustified geographical transfers or substantial changes in conditions.
In these cases, explains the Workers’ Statute, the worker will have the right to voluntary termination of the contract with the payment of the . But, in addition, he will also have the right to collect the contributory unemployment benefit, unemployment, if he had generated it.
The reason is found in the General Law of Social Security, it is explained that one of the causes of a legal situation of unemployment is the voluntary termination of the employment contract by the worker in the cases previously mentioned in addition to the cases of transfer geographic location of the worker.
The requirements to collect unemployment
This is key for the person who intends to collect unemployment, since the accreditation of the legal situation of unemployment is one of the requirements that must be met in order to receive the benefit. The State Public Employment Service (SEPE) also states that, in these cases, people are allowed to collect unemployment benefits if they meet the rest of the requirements. In the case of unemployment are the following:
-Be affiliated and registered or assimilated to Social Security.
-Be registered as .
-Subscribe the .
-Have contributed at least 360 days as unemployment within the last six years.
-Not having the ordinary retirement age.
-Do not collect a pension incompatible with work.
-Do not perform full-time employment or self-employment.
How to save your contributions if you do not have the right to unemployment
In those cases in which the voluntary departure of the worker does not grant him the right to collect unemployment, there is good news for the citizen: he will not lose the periods of unemployment contributions in that job. This has been stated by Maján, advisor to the General Subdirectorate of SEPE Benefits, in the program: “They are pending to have a new legal unemployment situation that can give you access to benefits.”
The SEPE expert explains that in these cases it is necessary for the person to go back to work and subsequently suffer an involuntary cessation of work. After it, the unemployment contributions of all periods will be accumulated.
However, the duration of this work period cannot be any one. According to Maján, the key for the SEPE will be that the benefit is not obtained fraudulently. Although there is nothing contemplated in the regulations, the legislation that comes from the Supreme Court speaks of a minimum of three months of work to be able to recognize the benefits.
In the cases in which the period of work was shorter, explains Maján, the SEPE consults on a case-by-case basis how both the hiring and the leave that gave the right to unemployment benefit took place.