Who can join?

Aaria Unemployment Fund is a universal wage-earners’ unemployment fund. We accept members from all industries.

When you are a member of a wage-earners’ unemployment fund, the amount of your earnings-related allowance and your alternation allowance depends on your wages.

You can join Aaria Unemployment Fund if you are

• under 68 years old,
• not a full-time entrepreneur, and
• employed on the day you join.

If you join Aaria before the age of 18, please note that work done before turning 18 does not count towards fulfilling the employment condition. When joining as a member over the age of 65, please be aware that we can only pay you earnings-related allowance due to lay off, circumstances comparable to a lay-off, adverse weather conditions, and interruption of work due to industrial action that does not affect your own terms of employment or working conditions until you reach the age of 68 at most.

‘Employed’ in this context means having a permanent or a fixed-term employment contract for full-time or part-time work. Please note that you cannot join an unemployment fund while you are on unpaid leave, such as on child care leave, on study leave, laid off or on unpaid sick leave.

Many of our members are members of Aaria Unemployment Fund through their trade union. Being a member of a union is not a condition for joining un unemployment fund, however.

Switching between unemployment funds

You can only be a member of one unemployment fund at a time.

If you switch to us from another unemployment fund, the time you accumulated towards the membership requirement and the employment requirement with your previous unemployment fund can be transferred to Aaria Unemployment Fund if the gap between the two memberships is no longer than one month.

Please note that if you were expelled from your previous unemployment fund, we cannot give you credit for your having previously satisfied the membership and employment requirement.

You can authorise us to cancel your membership with your current unemployment fund so that you can switch to us. If you want us to do that, please mention it in your membership application.

Alternatively, you can tell your current unemployment fund about wanting to cancel your membership yourself. We recommend that you wait for confirmation of having been accepted as a member of Aaria Unemployment Fund before you submit your notice of cancellation to your current unemployment fund.