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Employees
If you are a normal salaried worker, your Social Security payments and benefits can vary widely.
The minimum salary base for paying into the system is €516 and a basic percentage of 28.8 per cent of this is calculated as the monthly payment for Social Security.
A very small part of this is deducted from the worker’s salary The employer pays the greater part directly to the Social Security system in the name of the worker. These payments, with their extra charges, come to a minimum of about €180 a month for a low-salaried worker.
The system is much more complicated than the outline above and amounts and percentages vary according to the type of employment.
Once the salaried worker has paid into the system at the minimum rate for the same period of 35 years, he also will receive the same minimum pension of €453.98 a month as the self-employed worker who retires at 65 with a spouse to feed.
The employed worker’s monthly contributions include the possibility of unemployment payments if he should lose his job for reasons beyond his control. Self-employed workers only receive these payments if they are medically incapacitated for work.
Recent cutbacks in benefits mean that many unemployed workers receive only 75 per cent of the minimum wage as their unemployment benefit. The minimum wage for 2002 is €442.20, so this means that the unemployed who have not paid into the system for a full year will receive only €310 a month. What is worse, they lose their credit towards a retirement pension as well.
Both autónomo and cuenta ajena workers are entitled to medical benefits through the Spanish National Health scheme, which is going through the same sort of financial and overburden crisis as national health plans in most European countries.
Nevertheless, Spanish Social Security hospitals are just as modern and well-equipped as those in other countries and their medical staff are just as well trained. If the Social Security hospital on the Costa del Sol was good enough for Melanie Griffith to have her baby there, it should be good enough for the rest of us.
If a worker is ill, he will also continue to receive a portion of his salary, depending on various factors. The self-employed person can also receive sickness pay, at the same rate of 75 per cent of the minimum wage, as long as he can present a doctor’s certificate testifying that he is incapacitated for carrying out his profession.
Domestic workers have a special scheme, in which they pay at a lower rate, but receive the same minimum benefits as other workers after 15 years. That is if they are working on their own account, for two or three families. If they are employed full-time with one family, then they must be paid the minimum wage and have their Social Security under the normal scheme
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