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

JORGE AFARIAN; JULIETA LOBATO

Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires

Congreso; 36th International Labour Process Conference: Class and the Labour Process; 2018

ILPC, Instituto Gino Germani, CEIL-CONICET, 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 the contractor. This process makes it difficult to identify the employer, and waters down the fulfillment of their responsibilities against eventual breaches. This device of labour fragmentation and lowering of the costs is a form of precarization of labour relations that is constantly growing globally.For more than forty years, the writing of the current section 30 of the Labour Contract Law (N° 20.744), which includes the cession of place of business, contracting and subcontracting of works or services, has led to numerous and contradictory discussions about its scope and interpretation. From restrictive to broad positions, which are conditioned by the economic, social and political scenario, our jurisprudence has shaped the interpretation of this norm.At the beginning of November of 2017, and after a favourable parliamentary election, the Argentine national government presented a Draft Labour Reform, which substantially modifies numerous protective norms in individual and collective matters. The case of section 30 is not an exception since, as we will show, the reform limits its application and the 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 comment about the "new" article 30 proposed by the government. We will point out its main characteristics which, in a first approximation, we could consider harmful to current labour relations (not so to business ones).We intend to use the Preliminary Draft as a trigger for the discussion of a range of issues such as: What is the current government´s criteria regarding labour relations? How is the government´s position towards labour relations evidenced in the standard under examination? What consequences would the sanction of this reform terms bring? Could outsourcing be regulated in another way? What breaks and continuities exists between the proposed section and the existing jurisprudential doctrine? Which strategies could workers develop in order to address the problems that the reform may arise?