The half-sanction in the Chamber of Deputies of the Bases law, in its labor chapter, includes the definition of a new figure: the independent worker with collaborators. The warning about the possible arrival of this phenomenon lies in a piece of information offered by the National University of San Martib (UNSAM): 55% of informal workers work in SMEs that have up to five employees.
The labor reform occurs in a context of decline in quality employment. According to the latest SIPA report, in January there were 10.27 million registered salaried people and others 3.10 million people with independent work, that is, monotributists and self-employed.
While the group of formal salaried workers fell by 0.7% that month, which implies 68,800 casualties, independent work grew by 1.9%. The 35,200 self-employed workers who joined from December to January led the rise. The number of contributors to the Monotax rose 1.7%, while the Social Monotax – which grew abruptly during the pandemic – fell 1.9%.
Improving the labor market: a challenge
These data, added to a loss of purchasing power of 20 points for the private sector and 80 points for the public sector (February interannual comparison of IDEPI-UNPAZ), denotes the urgency of discussing how to improve the labor market.
However, the Center for Training and Studies on Work and Development (CETyD) of the UNSAM understands that this labor reform does not aim at that objective. “It does not combat informality, it legalizes it”assures Matías Maito, director of the institution.
The specialist points out in a CETyD report against the figure of the independent worker with collaborators, from this place: “Half of the informal workers work in companies with less than 5 employees. Instead of formalizing them, the reform allows them to be hired as monotributistas”.
Figure of the independent worker with collaborators: this is how it works
According to the bill, this figure that is introduced will be based on an autonomous relationship, but without registering a link of dependency between them, or with people who contract services or works. It will include the individual contribution of a monthly fee: “an expanded monotax to ART“, summarizes the political scientist Sebastián Etchemendy.
Production units with between 1 and 5 workers are also allowed to consider up to one year as a trial period, although only by collective agreement. For the CETyD this point “favors high turnover” (dismissal, hiring, dismissal, hiring to fill the same position), especially in activities with high participation of young people.
But the chapters IV and V of the Base Law They also offer other measures that aggravate the level of precariousness, despite maintaining the opposite spirit: eliminates all fines for informal work, legalizes and rates discriminatory dismissal, proposes the Termination Fund, favors labor outsourcing since it limits the liability of non-user companies and in the agricultural sector introduces the trial period in charge of the union.
They point out that it favors informal work
For these points, the CETyD understands that The reform “favors informal hiringgenerates unpredictability, increases litigation (in the absence of sanction, Justice can order the payment of wages owed and not recorded) and duly registered workers in SMEs up to 5 employees “could be fired and rehired as independents.”
According to the economist specializing in productive development, Leandro Mora Alfonsín, in the last 15 years informality in Argentina went from 32% “to almost half today”.
“Quality employment has to be a public policy ambition. The figure of collaborators can apply to sectoral segments, but it can consecrate or reinforce weak and asymmetric labor relations.” At the same time, he recognizes that the high level of litigation (recognized as the “trial industry”) is a serious problem, but the solution “lies in improving judicial processes.” “We must be very careful with regulations that do not result in solutions, but rather exacerbate problems or create new ones,” concludes the economist.
Source: Ambito
