The Chamber of Deputies’ Labor Committee unanimously approved the universal childcare bill in principle on Tuesday, October 20. According to Diario Financiero, the vote on the bill’s general principles received 13 votes in favor.
According to CNN Chile, the initiative seeks to expand access to this right and change the conditions currently set by the Labor Code. The text was developed from the report submitted during Sebastián Piñera’s term, to which Presidents Gabriel Boric and José Antonio Kast subsequently proposed amendments.
Minister of Labor and Social Security Tomás Rau, Minister of Women and Gender Equity Judith Marín, and Undersecretary of Early Childhood Education María Cristina Tupper attended the session. With this approval, the bill cleared an initial stage of its second legislative review.
Cross-party support did not resolve substantive differences. Rau acknowledged this before lawmakers: "we know there is still a long way to go, we know there are legitimate differences". He added that the executive branch would submit amendments at the end of this week to allow time for their analysis.
The minister justified the urgency by citing the employment situation, particularly unemployment among women and young people. He noted that childcare responsibilities remain one of the main barriers to women’s participation in the labor market.
Minister Marín thanked deputies for addressing the concerns of mothers who, each morning as they leave for work, must decide who will look after their children. She also highlighted the bill’s educational approach.
The Ministry of Labor welcomed the vote on X. On its @MintrabChile account, it wrote that the initiative would end "century-old discrimination" against women in the Labor Code and encourage the hiring of women.
For families, the changes under discussion focus on three points Rau identified as sticking points: financing the fund, potential copayments and strengthening public early childhood education.
On funding, the executive branch requested a new actuarial report from the Superintendency of Pensions. The study will assess different allocations of contributions and how they would be offset through Unemployment Insurance, both in individual accounts and in the Solidarity Unemployment Fund.
On copayments, the government is working on a formula so that vulnerable families, as defined by the Social Household Registry, would not have to pay the entire difference between the fund’s contribution and the actual cost of childcare.
The amendments would also include support for nursery schools financed through fund transfers (VTF) and the possibility of bringing forward access to the benefit for domestic workers.
Several lawmakers warned that their vote was not a blank check. The use of Unemployment Insurance drew the most repeated criticism, while opposition lawmakers also questioned funding for the public network.
The committee extended the deadline for submitting amendments to Friday, October 30. Rau set a goal of having the bill clear Congress before February.
