Argentinas CGT will file legal complaints against Mileis labor reform

The General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Argentina’s largest trade union organization, will file two legal complaints against the labor reform approved last week by Congress. The announcement was on Monday and specified that it will reach the Labor Court and the Administrative Court. “We trust in a republican power such as the judiciary, in its objectivity and in its commitment to uphold the National Constitution,” said Jorge Sola, one of the three co-secretaries general of the CGT, in a press conference. The so-called “Labor Modernization Act”, pushed by the government, seeks to weaken trade unions and lower costs for businesses. It includes cuts to severance pay and an extension of the maximum working day from eight to 12 hours. “It is false that the enactment of this Labor Reform Law seeks to increase employment and bring informal workers into the formal sector,” said a statement by the CGT.  “We know very well that this process cannot be improved by reducing workers’ rights or rolling back the legal framework to times closer to servitude or slavery,” they added. According to a statement by the CGT, the law violates two legal principles — progressivity (or non-regression), which prevents unjustified measures that represent a step backwards in acquired labor rights, and protectivity, which seeks to prevent employers’ abuse against the “weaker party”, the employee. The communiqué said that the law also affects article 14 bis of the National Constitution, “in rights such as protection against arbitrary dismissal, the right to strike, collective bargaining, free association, freedom of association, and social security, among other items.” Opinions on the law Juan Manuel Ottaviano, a labor lawyer and academic, said the law is “unconstitutional.” “Restrictions on the right to strike, the decentralization of collective bargaining, and the impact on individual rights, such as the reduction of severance pay, the replacement of overtime pay with systems such as time banks, represent a regression in labor and social protection,” he told the Herald. “(President) Milei’s economic program is causing a very deep recession in job-creating sectors such as the manufacturing industry,” he added, noting that the labor reform won’t create jobs. Martín Rappallini, head of the powerful Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), which participated in the drafting of the bill, said the reform will “change the labor regime from being focused on litigation and conflict to productivity and competitiveness.”