TNAG-0531-FCO40-626-Application-of-International-Labour-Convention-to-Hong-Kong-1975 — Page 38

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principal reasons for these difficulties lie in the fact that bipartite contributions (the employers' and employees' financial participation) cannot be expected in the case of this category of workers. Unless such workers can afford the payment of contributions sufficient to maintain a sound financing of the scheme, a substantial subsidy must be provided from public funds. It is difficult and expensive to collect contributions individually from self-employed persons and to make satisfactory arrangements to verify abstention from work and consequent loss of income giving rise to claims for benefits. A study carried out by the ILO in 1949 on this particular subject of coverage by social security of self-employed persons concluded that in countries where social security systems are little developed, voluntary organisations and co-operatives in particular, have themselves evolved

systems to protect members against social risks, and these may well serve as а starting point preparing the way for the advancement of social security.1

Domestic servants

35. Workers in domestic services are often excluded from the coverage of social insurance, particularly where it is the custom for them to live in the same household with the employer who takes care of them in the ca se of sickness or injury, on the basis of master-servant relationship. It is, however, not technically difficult to include this category of workers in the scope of social insurance where their employment status is reasonably stabilised.

Home workers

36. Home workers, i.e. those who do not work in their employer's workshop under his direct supervision, a re usually excluded from the scope of a social insurance scheme designed for wage-earning persons. Financially, however, they are in the same position as other workers, in that they perform their work on behalf of an employer with materials supplied by him for remuneration. The principle reason for the exclusion from the scope of protection may be the lack of direct subordination to the supervision by the employer.

Towards the universal coverage

scope

37.

The foregoing paragraphs show that under social security laws the of protection is defined positively by specifying the categories of workers protected, or it is defined negatively by listing the exceptions to the principle of full coverage. Generally speaking, in the case of social insurance schemes, they started with the protection of a particular social group, such as that of wage earners, and gradually extended its scope, as different schemes are set up, for different social groups. In many developed countries, the social insurance schemes have achieved a fairly comprehensive or almost full coverage of social security protection in this way. An extreme example is the Japanese pensions insurance system which has in total nine different enactments applying to different categories of the population, and thus achieves nationwide coverage. 2 As a result, there exist differences in the level of protection for various categories of persons protected.

38. Every single member of the population

is a potential beneficiary of social assistance or public services. Such schemes are acceptable because of the sentiment of national solidarity (rather than group solidarity) and also because of the awareness that part of all earnings and other income goes to the public treasury; accordingly all residents in one way or another contribute to the cost of social security. For example, universal old-age pensions are payable in Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden to all permanent residents above a specified age, irrespective of their previous contributions or the existence of need. Similarly, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Federal Republic of Germany, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the USSR and the United Kingdom pay family allowances from public funds to every eligible child below specified ages.

1 "Co-operation and social security II", International Labour Review, Dec. 1949, PP. 625-648; see also T. Higuchi: "Medical care through social insurance in the Japanese rural sector", ibid., March 1974, pp. 251-274.

2 In the same country, there are eight enactments for the nationwide coverage of health insurance.

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