History will judge those who are putting off the future development of our country, impeding or obstructing the labor and other indispensable structural reforms that are needed to be competitive at a local, regional or global scale.

Published in El Cronista on May 16, 2019
It is an undeniable fact that our model of industrial relations created under a retrograde labor and employment law is displacing and forcing traditional employees to find jobs under different hiring methods, for instance, as freelance entrepreneurs, tech workers, typical civil servants, self-employed, state-contracted employees, remote workers, clandestine workers, and in other formats that human labor may take.

It is always imperative to differentiate between facts and stories. Let’s see the evidence. Argentina has 6 million registered workers under employment relationship at the private sector, and this figure has remained the same for more than seven years. We have not been able to increase it; no new job positions have been created to keep up with the natural increase rate, and in these last seven years 1 million people have entered the market. At the same time, work off the books is on the rise; there is a gray zone between unemployment and a traditional stable job, irregular work, freelancing and new hiring forms such as those used by UBER, RAPPI, GLOVO, PEDIDOSYA, CABIFY and similar platforms. The system is forcing traditional employees to find anomalous options with no state-of-the-art regulation, which has been postponed for the last twenty years. Seguir leyendo Structural Reforms Ensure Social Movility →

The most irregular wage negotiation in the past few years is heating up, and most people take inflation rate as the only factor to regulate the purchasing power loss of our currency.

Published in El Cronista on May 7, 2019
Everything that is going on is being thought in terms of stagflation, where the domestic market has collapsed due to credit crunch, lack of investment and a general loss of confidence.

By way of reference corporations are adopting the stance to dodge Unions’ blows by granting one annual pay rise only, and eventually another increase when the period ends. In some cases, corporations are filing crisis prevention procedures [procedimiento preventive de crisis] as they cannot discuss wages under the current circumstances.

As to the stance adopted by Unions when bargaining, there is a wide array of alternatives between extremes. Seguir leyendo The Most Irregular Labor-Management Negotiations In the Past Few Years →

Strikes and other industrial actions may mean the full exercise of the constitutional right under Section 14bis of our Magna Carta, or an abuse of right and even extortion in an overtly unlawful act.

Published in El Cronista on May 3, 2019
This is a rather peculiar right because it is the only right whose exercise implies causing damage as a result of a total or partial work stoppage against the production of an employer or many employers at whom the protest is aimed.

Otto Kahn-Freund, who is widely regarded as the founding father of modern British labor law, defined that strike is the pathology of the legal system, as divorce is to marriage and bankruptcy to business law. Seguir leyendo Striking May Become Illegal and Extortionary →

Labor-management negotiations have just begun and unions are claiming quarterly pay rises under a quarterly revision clause, with initial installments to recover the purchasing power loss of 2018 and forecasts that surpass any official provisions so far. They are willing to break the mold and handle each and every conflict that may arise in their attempt to get a fairly reasonable increase.

Published in El Cronista on April 16, 2019
Apparently at the first meetings between unions and corporations, CGT [Workers’ General Confederation] has agreed on a uniform strategy based on requests that are grounded on the 2018 model but with changes in the frequency of pay rises to keep pace with inflation.

By and large collective bargaining begins in March or April and the agreements reached are effective for twelve months, so according to unions the first pay rise should be given in the period March-May or April-June. In turn, thirty days before the expiration of each quarter there will be another pay rise according to prices and inflation rate. Seguir leyendo In the Race Between Prices and Wages Collective Bargaining Started With Revision →