AMMAN — Some
private schools temporarily halt payment of their teachers’ contribution to the
Social Security Corporation (SSC), mainly when schools are off during the
summer.
اضافة اعلان
Haitham
Al-Najdawi, director of the Central Inspection Directorate at the Ministry of
Labor, said the ministry receives complaints from teachers each year over the
issue.
“If the contract
is ongoing, the facility must pay all wages and financial dues to employees,”
Najdawi told
Jordan News.
He said the
teachers’ complaints are usually filed at the beginning of the scholastic year
in the fall, when schools reconvene following a summer break.
“Social security
subscription is a right that cannot be revoked, if the teacher returns to work
in the same school after the summer vacation ends,” he said.
“Some schools
believe that they can get away with deceiving the system by terminating old
contracts and signing new ones at the beginning of the academic year,” he
pointed out.
But he insisted
that the law “protects the right of the teacher and obliges the school to pay
the subscription retroactively.”
Munther
Al-Sourani, the president of the
Private School Owners Association, said
halting teachers’ contribution to SSC, even temporarily, is in violation of the
law.
“Stopping
participation is against the law, and the school is obligated to pay the
subscription retroactively with a fine of 30 percent,” Sourani told
Jordan
News.
He explained
that schools could resort to such steps to make up for a temporary shortfall of
revenue caused by some parents deferring, or failing to pay their children’s
tuition.
Noureddine
Nadim, a former spokesperson for the Jordanian Teachers’ Syndicate, outlined
the technical details related to teachers’ rights.
He said laws are
subject to development and modernization, but the “problem is in monitoring
their implementation”. He explained that teachers can resort either to the
Ministry of Education on professional and technical issues, and the Ministry of
Labor for their labor rights.
“Some schools
act in violation of the law, by evading it,” he said. “They fail to pay full
wages, or drop the minimum wage, and some force teachers to sign receipts in
exchange for clearance showing that they obtained their dues.”
“Such moves rob
the teachers of their financial rights, including their subscription to social
security.’’
While some
schools opt for terminating contracts with teachers and reinstating them the
following year, and if the new contract remains unsigned, it is considered a
continuation of the old one, he explained.
He said that
will obligate the school to pay for the months in which the subscription was
suspended to the teacher, even if the contract wording changed.
Dana, the owner of a
private school, said some schools defer payments for insurance subscriptions
during the summer vacation because of the lack of guarantees that the teacher
will return to work with the same school in the following academic year.
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