The initiative prepared by the economic team will maintain the possibility of considering delivery workers “independent” workers.
The project of law who will present the Government for regulate employment in applications distribution will include a caveat that will bring relief to the shareholders of these companies: it will allow them choose to transfer their workers to a dependency relationship specific to the current Employment Contract lawOr well, keep them independent. This is a key distinction that differentiates the initiative prepared by the economic team from others prepared some time ago by Alberto Fernández’s own administration and which were more restrictive at that point.
“It is a proposal that maintains the universe (of delivery people) in the current conditions; “You can be in a dependent relationship or be an independent worker and in the latter case we are going to create the conditions to expand rights and protection,” the Minister of Labor, Raquel “Kelly” Olmos, told this newspaper yesterday. The official confirmed that The project will contemplate “under precise conditions both alternatives” and avoided providing other details until the actual presentation of the regulatory text.
Along these lines, the proposal of the Executive that has the impetus of Sergio Massa will contemplate the coexistence of two categories of workers of applications: ones with all the LCT guaranteesthat is, the legal floor of minimum wage, vacations, social security, coverage against work accidents and compensation for dismissal without cause, and others for whom the project will establish lower hierarchy bases. The logic is that at least they will be recognized as workers, although not under the protection of current regulations.
Applications like PedidosYa or Rappi employ more than 100 thousand delivery drivers in Argentina. Most of them, distributed between the Federal Capital and the province of Buenos Aires. An investigation carried out last year by the Canillita leader and Buenos Aires deputy Omar Plaini It reflected that in 2022 in that district alone, 21 million commercial transactions carried out by both apps had been surveyed through at least 20 thousand businesses, 80% of them in the gastronomic sector. Of those numbers, Only 2,000 employees were employed by transnational capital companies.
“It is a new form of labor in which employers do not comply with labor laws that require them to register staff and provide them with health, ART and rights. The worst thing is that no one controls. I presented a bill to create a registry that got half a sanction from the Buenos Aires Senate and is now in Deputies, but In the middle, an impressive lobby of companies appeared to keep workers independent,” Plaini explained. The leader explained that “unfortunately the applications told the delivery people that they are going to be their own ‘unicorns’, owners of their time, but in reality they are managed by the algorithm that scores their work.”
In 2020, the then Minister of Labor, Claudio Moroni, prepared a comprehensive bill to regulate applications which was based on the presumption of the dependency relationship of any worker incorporated in the companies’ registry. Then, riding on the explosion of profitability that the pandemic represented for the activity, the pressure from the applications was intensified to the maximum to prevent the initiative from being presented to Congress. Since then – and until now, with the announcement of Massa’s team – There was no other attempt by the Executive to standardize the activity. Plaini recalled that Among the owners of OrdersYa is BlackRock, an investment fund that became Argentina’s largest private creditor.
Source: Ambito
