Lawyer. Employment advisor of companies and chambers of business. Academic Counselor for Libertad y Progreso.
EL CRONISTA – It is difficult to know what has been the damage that the pandemic crisis caused to the economy and within it to employment in just six months. They are the typical effects of a war where companies and jobs disappeared, and part of the invested capital disintegrated. More than a million jobs were lost, and clandestine work occupies 50% of the market.
The lack of adherence to current laws, and an international tradition in which our country has not honored its debts, created uncertainty, ambiguity, loss of confidence, and above all, the total absence of a model that is understandable by citizens with reasonable expectations of a better future. Today the local investor has doubts about what to do rather than the foreigner who continues to look at us with a magnifying glass to see towards which model we orient our State policies.
In this context, a battery of measures is expected that will contribute to favor the recovery of confidence, allow the flow of investments to begin, and first the activities related to primary consumption in general will be reborn, simultaneously with the return of micro-enterprises, and later cover the most lagging sectors such as hotels, tourism, and domestic and international flights.
We have for the analysis, three basic premises.
FIRST: No horizon is plausible if the validity of representative and federal democracy, and respect for the National Constitution and for the fundamental rights enshrined in it, is not guaranteed. In particular, it will be necessary to emphasize property rights, as the Mayor of Pinamar Martín Yesa is reaffirming in an exemplary way, who spoke out against the usurpation of land and also acted accordingly.
SECOND: The second premise is linked to the position of the Executive Power regarding the nationalization of services, expropriations (such as the failed attempt in Vicentín), and the increase in activity and the volume of the public administration superstructure. With the debureaucratization and paperlessness of recent years, today only one in four national, provincial and municipal public employees perform real functions. In education in the Province of Buenos Aires, for each position we have three teachers, who on average work less than half the year.
THIRD: The third premise imposes a profound labor tax reform and social security, reorienting the fiscal plexus towards an economy that rewards growth, and replaces regressive taxes, adapting the pension system and social works, promoting the efficiency of public services that are provided based on collection.
The labor reform should unravel the tangle of the Preventive and Compulsory Social Isolation stage, which was based on five institutes:
a. the duplication of the compensation for wrongful dismissal, DNU 4/2020;
b. the subsidized suspension of art. 223 bis (LCT);
c. the application of the Program of Emergency Assistance to Work and Production or ATP;
d. the prohibition of dismissal for lack or reduction of work or force majeure or without just cause;
e. Law 27,555 on telecommuting.
Now this battery will have to be unlocked to re-enter the New Normal, with an unprecedented drop in all micro and macroeconomic economic indicators, and financing the process with monetary issuance.
The resources that will have to be resorted to are based on the following premises:
Promoting investment requires clear rules of the game that last over time and do not undergo changes to the detriment of investors and taxpayers. Contradictory decisions or the lack of clear conduct regarding respect for fundamental rights will discourage the venture investor;
The creation of jobs requires a challenging promotional plan that totally free companies from employer contributions when they prove the creation of genuine jobs based on a pre-established parameter and for a reasonable period of no less than two years;
The approval of the laws of the future, a new norm on teleworking, on the industry and knowledge services, and on what will come in the field of 4G, 5G and artificial intelligence;
The promotion of startups with financing, elimination of taxes and social charges, and technical advice, especially when they generate employment;
To avoid the massive brain drain and investment, it will be necessary to compete with countries like Uruguay that are attracting them with clear measures to encourage the flight, taking the most profitable for our future.
Regarding the substantive measures that imply substantive reforms, we have:
The layoff and unemployment fund: it will be contributory, it is financed with 2% of the gross remuneration contributed to a trust, it includes all workers from the date of entry after the law that creates the fund, and includes the rest in gradually each year that funding increases;
Company collective bargaining: limited to the operational needs of each company for the benefit of both parties;
Subsidies must be transformed into onerous and bilateral: all subsidies will be paid in exchange for the subsidiary performing community tasks, supporting public services, and completing arts and crafts courses, and training to reintegrate into the market;
We must create the contract by the project: whose validity is limited to a specific object that has a beginning and an end of work;
We must incorporate new technologies through legislation without violating precedents and current regulations, where new regulations are juxtaposed with existing ones without violating acquired rights:
Exiting the recession, promoting a return to the work culture, is essential to return to the path of growth lost more than ten years ago, in a context where investments are updated by new technologies and new ways of organizing work, with a reasonable regulatory framework.
