INVESTIGADORES
POBLETE Lorena Silvina
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Reinventing the employer. Challenges in the formalization of domestic work in Argentina
Autor/es:
POBLETE, LORENA
Lugar:
Nueva York
Reunión:
Congreso; SASE 31st Annual Meeting; 2019
Institución organizadora:
Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics
Resumen:
Like family! All over the world, employers repeat this argument. Domestic workers are not workers but family helping with domestic tasks and taking care of children and elderly family members. That is why the most important claim that domestic workers organizations made at the International Labour Conference in 2010 was to be considered as workers, and to be entitled of labor and social security rights. Hence, the approval of the ILO Convention 189 represents a global recognition of their status as workers. In Latin American, most of the countries have ratified the convention, and have changed their legislation accordingly in the last few years. However, the majority of domestic workers still working outside any legal framework. The lack of legal mechanisms to inspect private homes leaves the state powerless to enforce the law. Thus, the main challenge is to create innovative mechanisms of enforcement.In Argentina, after the approval of the 2013 Law on domestic work, the Ministry of Labor and the Tax Agency (which are the institutions in charge of the enforcement of the labor law) engaged in some institutional experiments. Regardless the classical strategies to encouraged employers to pay social security contributions by tax exceptions, these institutions designed four new coercive procedures to seek formalization. For doing so, the notion of an employer was redefined considering that in this particular labor relationship either the worker or the employer can be assimilated to the parties in the standard employment relation. Thus, on the one hand, these institutions established two mechanisms to promote formalization and, on the other hand, they implemented two strategies to control formalization. First, an ex-officio formalization was instituted by a presidential decree in 2013, when the gross annual income and the value of the home of the taxpayer exceeded the minimum established. Second, taking into account the incomes and the credit card expenses, periodically, the Tax Agency informed taxpayers by email that they are suspected of having an informal domestic worker working for them. Third, the Tax Agency created an App allowing domestic workers to control if the employer makes the social contributions. Fourth, the Ministry of Labor, in 2018, for the first time, did labor inspections at the entry of gated neighborhoods and buildings. Based on legislation, documents from the Tax Agency and interviews with key informants, this paper seeks to understand the diver conceptions of the employer underpinning these different procedures.