Lawyer. Employment advisor of companies and chambers of business. Academic Counselor for Libertad y Progreso.
CRONISTA – Soon there will be no more excuses, and reality will pass us by, with no choice but to face it. Lawyers adapt quickly, we can operate everything remotely, equipped with telematic equipment, we can advise our clients, attend to judicial processes, and claims in administrative headquarters. We can do everything required by the profession from anywhere.
But in many cases, which were paralyzed by the pandemic, it is evident that if we continue with the same models that dragged us to economic and social disaster, insisting on them will continue to tip the balance, increasing deterioration, increasing the effects of the crisis, and placing us in a decadent and insoluble scenario. Einstein said that “we cannot solve a problem by thinking in the same way as when we created it”, and therefore a problem reiterates, “it cannot be solved by the same level of consciousness with which it was created”.
It is to some extent a lateral thinking form as Edward de Bono would describe it.
In the new world of ideas, it is said that leaders of change must face innovation by redesigning under new approaches or points of view. It is what is often synthesized as thinking outside the box (“to think out of de box”).
The new leaders of the companies that will make use of exponential technologies must also be exponential leaders, who will develop within the framework of new ideas and concepts. UBER, Cadify, Rappi, Glovo, Pídalo and other models based on applications that relate the service provider with the service user are some of the expressions that invade the new world that is imposed on us every day. Mercado Libre, Despegar.com, Alí Baba and Amazon operate in another dimension.
It seems then this brief time that separates us from a return, we must take the labor relations model to another level, opening a truly disruptive debate in which all voices are heard.
The new model of human resources and labor relations does not have to destroy the labor gains achieved to date, it must create the new conditions imposed by the markets, while respecting acquired rights.
Let’s review some issues that are of urgent treatment:
1 The dismissal and unemployment fund should replace the uncertainty in which SME workers find themselves today, who when they are fired, rarely collect their severance pay for distraction. In other words, it can be a general regime or one limited to companies with less than 100 workers, for example;
2 Teleworking, remote work, home office, ambulatory or nomadic work, should be a source of new jobs, as in comparative law, refocusing its basic instruments;
3 It is necessary to think about new forms of contracting, such as the case of contracts for work under Italian law, where the worker is hired only to fulfill a project, a work, an objective or a predetermined object, so that it is valid. determinable based on compliance with it;
4 The day and the breaks have to face a comprehensive review. In effect, not only does working time face technological changes and new ways of organizing work, they also have to do with what is demanded of workers as a result of productivity and efficiency needs;
5 The reduction of the weekly working day from 40 to 35 hours in France (Lionel Jospin, 1998-2002) was almost twenty years old and no one could verify whether unemployment fell or whether it harmed the competitiveness of companies. The truth is that in Spain when the reduction of the working day was considered, as in France, the salary was reduced proportionally, and the results are uncertain. Today we do not think so much about the reduction as about the adaptation to the new models of labor relations.
6 The autonomy of the collective will per company is and can be a source of creation of modern law, adapted to the moments and the demands imposed by very changing and even surprisingly disruptive circumstances. The parties have managed to adapt the regulatory framework based on the agreement, as happened with Minera Lumbrera, Toyota, GM, Cerro Vanguardia, Minera Gol Barrick Gold and Pacua Lama, Heladerías Freddo, Tren y Parque de la Costa, and lately Bagó and Biogenesis, Papel Prensa, or the gastronomic agreement of UTGHRA.
7 The collective availability produced almost revolutionary results even when it only operated in the matter of average working hours (art. 198 LVT), allowing the parties to negotiate the special conditions that activities under special conditions demand per company, as in fact happened successfully in our country, but now extended to all institutes of individual or collective labor law.
If the social actors are responsible, the debate of what will come is imposed, which is already settling in the countries of the region, while we continue to be distracted by the pandemic, whose prevention measures are clear and definitive if the community is responsible and complies with them. with conviction, while the vaccine arrives.
If there are those who are truly responsible for the changes that will take place, this is the moment to debate, disagree, and finally agree on the new conditions required by the human resources and labor relations model to face the challenges of the future, before we continue again. trapped in the labyrinth of a social conflict that leads us to decline.
