Javier Milei’s DNU to “modernize” the economy has caused a shock in the trade union and business world. No wonder: labor reform is one of the longest chapters of the 366 articles and one of the “hardest” – according to the Private Chambers themselves – since the “productive revolution” of Carlos Menem, which also included privatizations and state reform.
While the basic rules support the “liberation of the productive forces”, the more than 40 amendments to labor legislation establish various limitations for employees and unions, such as reducing the basis for calculating benefits, expanding the causes of dismissal and restricting of the exercise of the right to strike.
According to article 24, in collective conflicts a minimum coverage of 75% of essential services must be guaranteed, thus setting a threshold that did not exist until now and expanding the areas, since in addition to health, education, transport and water distribution, they add gas, gasoline and electricity, the production of medicines, commercial aeronautics and the customs service.
On the other hand, a new category is created in the legislation, that of services of “transcendental importance”, where the minimum benefit must be 50% and multiple items are included, such as transport, industry, banking, gastronomy, food production, building materials, exportable goods and services, and radio and television services..
This list, in turn, may be expanded according to what a commission composed of five technicians decides, which may include other items when its interruption would endanger life, health or safety, constitute an important public service, cause a serious damage national crisis and will complicate the supply of essential products or affect tax collection targets.
“The labor chapter is the most important, it is a paradigmatic change, it modifies 60 or 70 year old rules,” said business consultant Héctor García, who however recognized that Article 24 is “vulnerable”. “It is a limitation of the right to strike, it creates transcendental activities that do not exist in any legislation and which in the end are all relevant,” he warned.
After the suspension of the right to strike during the last dictatorship, Menem reintroduced restrictions on essential services in 1990, but without defining a minimum supply percentage and with a narrower scope of activity than that now established by the decree.. As time passed, union pressure forced the authorities to back down and, some time later, they attempted to reinstate it again.
In this context, labor law experts believe that the rules will be challenged in court, as happened with the decrees issued in the 1990s in response to trade union claims at the ILO. “There are more essential services than before, the entire food industry could practically not go on strike, the banks and the truck drivers, the limitation of the right to strike is judicious,” said lawyer Eduardo Massot.
Indeed, the Government has not specified the criteria for defining why some sectors are “transcendental”. For labor law lawyer Pablo Devoto this addition is “excessive”, since “according to the rules of the Commission of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations and the Committee for Freedom of Association of the ILO, only the concept of “essential services” .
The DNU stipulates that delegate meetings and conferences must be held “without harming the normal activities of the company or affecting third parties.” “Any such action risks becoming a very serious infringement and being subject to sanctions,” she said. the labor law lawyer and director of the Social Law Observatory of the Autonomous CTA, Luis Campos.
The decree designed by Federico Sturznegger passed through various filters, from Macrismo’s technicians to the chief of staff, Nicolás Posse, to the ministers and to Milei himself. The labor reform, however, is the work of lawyers who assist the Minister of Labor, Omar Yasín, such as Miguel Ponte (ex Techint) and Julio Cordero (UIA). “It still needs to be regulated,” say official sources.
Source: Clarin
