This Friday, the Senate turned into law the labor reform promoted by the government of Javier Milei. With 42 affirmative votes, 28 negative votes and 2 abstentions, the law finished its journey after having been approved for the Chamber of Deputies. The text of the law, the result of intense negotiations, excluded article 44 (on sick leave), although with the ruling party’s promise to resume discussion on the issue in ordinary sessions. Presents a new regulatory framework on contracts, compensation, labor and union rights and collective agreements. The initiative involves productive sectors, workers and business chambers, and redefines the employment relationship in several aspects relevant to the private sector.
How will it impact the workplace?
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The Argentine Association of Labor and Social Security Law (AADTSS) is a national scientific entity made up of lawyers in the specialty – who practice as defenders of workers, union entities or companies–, labor law academics and labor law magistrates.
As defined by your vice president (and former president in previous periods) Jorge Elias“it is a broad area of debate and legal production that does not usually establish an official position representing any particular interest.”
In that sense, the lawyer analyzed the sanctioned norm and the possible future scenariosin a personal capacity, but clarified that his position on these issues is shared by a good part of the specialists in the matter, both from the AADTSS and outside it.
Unemployment and labor reform
Elías pointed out that there is a “general consensus” both among those who are identified with the interests of workers and the business sector, according to which, “what creates employment is the economic growth and purchasing power of consumers; in particular, wage earners. It is not the law that creates work,” he points out.
And he adds that what can be foreseen is “the reduction in job protection that results from practically all approved modifications. Which, in the immediate future, could generate some economic advantage for employers, with the consequent damage for workers, particularly in the continuity of their jobs and the level of salaries. That will surely have recessive effects that will impact the process of creating stable and quality jobs, and will generate greater social conflict”.
The reduction in labor protection results from practically all approved modifications.
“Capricious provisions and very clumsy writing”
In addition to article 44 referring to sick leave – which contemplated cuts of up to 50 percent of salary, in case of illness. worker and triggered massive opposition–, the rest of the articles present some particular features, not only in the enunciation of the restrictions imposed on the workers, but also in the way in which they are expressed.
“The law has capricious provisions with very clumsy wording, which leave the impression of a kind of revenge destined to mutilate rights left and rightaddressing such a delicate issue, with blows or with a chainsaw, to use a fashionable expression,” he noted. And the desire to unprotect the worker will be the cause of judicial questioning. At that point, as has already happened with other “reforms,” everyone predicts a avalanche of lawsuits. Both those promoted by each affected worker and the collective actions that union organizations can articulate. Just the opposite of the announced purpose of reducing litigation.”
Conflicts and litigation on the rise
Among other points that will be the subject of judicial questioning, Elías highlights:
1- The claim of exclude workers from legal protection considered as “autonomous” service providers, or workers supposedly considered independent (art. 97, law 27,742), platform workers and delivery workers, and those who are classified as monotributistas to conceal an employment relationship.
2- The restitution of the food vouchers as a “non-remunerative” component of salaryaffecting the settlement of compensation.
3- The possibility of grant and remove at discretion and without generating an acquired right, any “voluntary” benefit without the right to claim.
4- The implementation of a system «hourly mobility» (the so-called hour bank) supposedly voluntary to use the worker’s time exceeding the legal working day and without paying overtime.
5- The flexibility to distribute the vacations according to employer convenience.
The law violates the principle of progressivity in social rights recognized in the Constitution and the Human Rights Treaties.
6- The prohibition of claiming for damages in cases of “black” or poorly registered employment, with the intention of providing impunity for these abuses.
7- A system of indexation of labor debts lower than the variation in the cost of living for pending trials.
8- The possibility that after years of trial, the employer can pay the sentence in easy installments (6 or 12 depending on the size of the company).
9- The constitutionality of the so-called Labor Assistance Fund (FAL)which diverts employer contributions to the retirement system to create a reserve to finance severance pay at no cost to the employer.
10- Las limitations on the right to strike in activities considered essential or of transcendental importance (almost all).
11- The possibility of applying the rules of a less favorable special collective agreement to the worker than the general collective agreement.
“The law cuts rights entrenched in our legal order and violates the principle of progressivity in social rights recognized in the Constitution and the Human Rights Treaties,” concluded Elías.
