ART: cross between lawyers and companies due to the Supreme Court ruling

Ismael Bermudez

09/04/2021 9:54 AM

• Clarín.com

• Economy

Updated 09/04/2021 9:54 AM

The ruling of the Supreme Court last Thursday that declared the

constitutionality of the Medical Commissions

as an administrative court prior to the judicial instance of people who suffer work-related injuries reopened the

“crossfire” between

labor

lawyers

, on the one hand, and business advisers and the ART, of the other.

For

Cynthia Benzion

of the Labor Lawyers Association

“the ruling prevents workers from fully and directly accessing justice

as the rest of the affected people can. It means a

violation of the right to jurisdiction and the principle of equality

recognized in the National Constitution and International Treaties on Human Rights with Constitutional Hierarchy. And it does nothing more than endorse the operation of

a system that privatizes occupational health

and disregards the health and life care of working people ”.

On the other hand,

Mara Bettiol

, president of the Union of Labor Risks Insurers, said that “

we celebrate the Court's ruling

, because it has finished validating all the key aspects of the Reform of the Labor Risks Law.

It supports the previous step by Medical Commissions, the use of the Scale as an instrument to weigh damages derived from an accident or occupational disease, and

makes clear how to calculate compensation ”.

Bettiol added that the

claims "that exaggerate and magnify the

remaining

damages

of a work accident have generated an

enormous cost overrun

for the productive economy and also many inequities among workers and unpredictability for all of us who make up the productive fabric."

"For its resolution, the law established: to replace the payment of fees according to the amount of the sentence, by a

fixed amount per medical act

in relation to the work actually carried out, that the experts are chosen by competition from which then and by lottery they assign the causes to be treated. And the remaining damages of a work accident are determined according to what is established in the Scale ", he explained.

In the same vein, for the business advisor,

Marcelo Aquino,

“by establishing that the medical commissions are constitutional, they give the injured worker a

speed in the process

that allows them to guarantee as soon as possible the collection of what would be the economic reparation due to accident or occupational disease. And although

the Justice recognizes compensations that could possibly be higher

, the average of a trial is

in 6 years

so that the economic reparation would clearly be affected ”.

Meanwhile, the labor lawyer

Luis Ramírez

says that “the Labor Risks Law has had an

uncomfortable relationship with the

National

Constitution

since its enactment in 1995, to the point that it has the

record of judicial declarations of unconstitutionality by the Supreme

Court itself, when I had another composition. In order to overcome them and be able to defend the ART system, the governments of the day have enacted various laws, such as 26,773 of 2012 and 27,348 of 2017. This proves that

in certain issues there is no 'crack' ”.

For his part, the labor lawyer León Piasek states that "

the ruling will have to be denounced in international instances

because it does not allow the worker direct access to the National Labor Court, which is unconstitutional."

And he concludes: “What makes the ART celebrate this ruling is because it reduces the risk of immediately paying in full the repair of the damages.

Also because it

favors employers

since, by putting ART as intermediaries, they

demarcate their responsibilities regarding

non-compliance with preventive measures for risk and work safety ”.

NE

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