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Although
or that he was working at least one a day a week in any one job. the Government's present view is that the scheme should be open at the outset to all employed persons, subject only to the qualifications set out above, an alternative approach would be to introduce the scheme in two stages, beginning with employers who have (say) 10 staff or more. The effect of such a phased introduction would be that only 20% of employers, but 75% of employees, would be covered by the first, stage, since one quarter of employees work for an employer with 9 employees or less.
8.8
An employee would be able to freeze his membership by ceasing to contribute to the scheme. He would then cease to be eligible for benefit, apart from an entitlement to death and retirement benefit (if the latter feature is included in the scheme) related to his period of contribution to the scheme. Alternatively, he could withdraw entirely from the scheme, in which case he would receive back his own contributions plus a small
The amount investment return for his period as a member of the scheme. would require trial advice, because he would have already received the benefit of protection during his period of membership of the scheme. An employee could subsequently rejoin, but would then have to wait for six months to be eligible for sickness and injury benefits.
b)
8.9
Contracting-out
The reason for permitting contracting-out is that membership of a good occupational benefit scheme should be accepted as an alternative to joining the Government scheme. Accordingly, it is proposed that an employer should be permitted to contract-out his employees if he can satisfy the authority responsible for approving contracting-out arrangements that the benefits available under his scheme satisfy the qualifying conditions. contracting-out arrangements might apply to particular employees, a particular class of employees or all employees. If an employee were contracted-out, ie would not be able to join the Government scheme.
The
8.10 The two main qualifying conditions for contracting-out would be that the benefits under the company scheme should be secure and at least as good as those provided under the Government scheme. To be regarded as secure, the benefits would have to be paid from monies set aside by the employer or guaranteed in an acceptable way. It would not be necessary for the occupational benefit provisions to match precisely the benefit provisions under the sickness, injury and death benefit schome, provided that in general they were at least as favourable.
8.11 A further qualifying condition would be that some protection should be given to the accrued death and retirement benefit rights (i.e. benefit rights earned in that employment) of employees who leave the company. The condition could be satisfied in a number of ways: for example by retaining rights in the scheme or by a lump sum refund. The Government would be ready to consider arrangements whereby a sum could be paid by the contracted-out scheme into the Government scheme when an employee left the contracted-out scheme or the scheme itself ceased to be contracted-out, This sum would buy the employee death and retirement benefit rights in the Government scheme, as if he had been a member of it during his period of contracted-out service in the company scheme,
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