Outsourcing in the Preliminary Draft Labour Reform in Argentina, A new setback in the protection of workers?

JORGE AFARIAN; JULIETA LOBATO

CABA

Congreso; 36th International Labour Process Conference 'Class and the labour process'; 2018

Facultad de Ciencias Sociales (UBA)

The outsourcing, which many companies in our country use as a central productivestrategy, generates a triangulation between the principal company, the worker and thecontractor. This process makes it difficult to identify the employer, and waters down thefulfillment of their responsibilities against eventual breaches. This device of labourfragmentation and lowering of the costs is a form of precarization of labour relations thatis constantly growing globally.For more than forty years, the writing of the current section 30 of the Labour ContractLaw (N° 20.744), which includes the cession of place of business, contracting andsubcontracting of works or services, has led to numerous and contradictory discussionsabout its scope and interpretation. From restrictive to broad positions, which areconditioned by the economic, social and political scenario, our jurisprudence has shapedthe interpretation of this norm.At the beginning of November of 2017, and after a favourable parliamentary election, theArgentine national government presented a Draft Labour Reform, which substantiallymodifies numerous protective norms in individual and collective matters. The case ofsection 30 is not an exception since, as we will show, the reform limits its application andthe grounds for allocation of responsibility in the case of a violation of the law.Although the future of the regulation is still uncertain, we will make a critical commentabout the "new" article 30 proposed by the government. We will point out its maincharacteristics which, in a first approximation, we could consider harmful to currentlabour relations (not so to business ones).We intend to use the Preliminary Draft as a trigger for the discussion of a range of issuessuch as: What is the current government's criteria regarding labour relations? How is thegovernment's position towards labour relations evidenced in the standard underexamination? What consequences would the sanction of this reform terms bring? Couldoutsourcing be regulated in another way? What breaks and continuities exists betweenthe proposed section and the existing jurisprudential doctrine? Which strategies couldworkers develop in order to address the problems that the reform may arise?