The granting of differentiated increases to pensioners and retirees It’s unconstitutional, both when they benefit the lowest and when the highest receive them.
This is how the former president of the Federal Chamber of Social Security, Luis René Herrero, responded to a question from Clarín regarding the fact that Minimum wage pensioners will receive an 18% increase in April and the rest – 27.35%. There are 5,000,000 pensioners with a minimum salary out of a total of 7.4 million.
“Discrimination in the application of mobility due to the amounts received (minimum, medium, higher, etc.) is unconstitutional”. Inflation hurts everyone equally.” Even more so, Herrero added, when Assets above the bottom have lost more than 50% of their purchasing power for inflation, from September 2017 to December 2023; AND minimum equity around 25%
“Article 43, paragraph 2, of the national Constitution prohibits any type of discrimination that harms homogeneous individual interests or collective impact rights, as in this case,” says Herrero. And he adds: “The guarantee of mobility – like any constitutional guarantee – covers all its recipients equally. Equality, as prescribed by the supreme principle of equality before the law.”
Herrero added that “whatever the mobility mechanism implemented by the legislator – percentage of asset assets or average salary of contract workers – it shouldn’t discriminate for the amount of pension received by any pensioner or pensioner from the contributory system”.
For his part, the lawyer Guillermo Jauregui he explained that, just as the lawsuits began when the increase in minimum wages, due to the granting of bonuses, was higher than the others – and the pension pyramid was flattened -, now there will also be strong litigationbecause the minimum assets will receive 18% and the rest 27.35%.
In March, with decree 177/24, the current government granted a 27.18% increase on both the minimum credit of 105,712 dollars and the bonus of 55,000 dollars existing since February, leaving the sum of these two concepts at 204,445 dollars , exemplified Jauregui, (at $134,445 plus $70,000 bonus).
“This measure tells us that the current government considered the reinforcements granted to the minimum asset to be valid to alleviate the inflationary effect. But the important thing is that in March 2024 the increase was applied to what would in fact be the minimum asset ($105,712 + bonus 55,000 dollars). With this provision the minimum de facto assets (minimum assets + bonus) have grown with the same increase in general mobility, thus respecting what is postulated by article 8 of law 27,609.”
Of course, this increase in the de facto minimum (minimum + bonus) is better than the existing freeze, Herrero admitted, but It is not free from legal challenges.
The fact is that in April there will be an increase of 27.35%, but only on the minimum credit, while the bonus will remain the same as in March, at 70,000 dollars. This will ensure that the overall increase (having + bonus) is equal to 18%, less than the 27.35% of the general mobility.
Jauregui states that “a measure that would reconcile all legal norms and that would constitute a harmonious, just and equitable solution, would be to consider that the legal minimum income in March 2024 It’s not $134,445, but $204,445 (including $70,000 bonus). “This would amount to consolidating into the legal minimum what is the de facto minimum.”
“If this were done, the 27.35% increase would be applied to $204,445, resulting in a low of $260,361 in April. With this provision, both those who earn the minimum salary and those who earn the highest salary, they would be the same in increasing its benefits e “It would not generate a major dispute.”
«It must be said that if it is illegitimate (art. 8, law 27.609) to grant increases higher than the minimum compared to the rest of the pensioners, as happened between September 2022 and November 2023, it is also illegitimate to grant increases higher than the minimum to pensions higher than the minimum, as would happen now,” concluded Jauregui.
Source: Clarin
