Workers harvest apples on a production farm in Coahuila.MIGUEL SIERRA / EFE
After the knock on the table, the hand outstretched.
The Mexican Government has opened to negotiate the initiative to prohibit
outsourcing
that he presented two weeks ago and that had caused an important friction, one more, with the private initiative.
In a meeting held on Monday night, the authorities agreed to review the proposal article by article and, if necessary, modify it.
Faced with the Government's complaint of abusive outsourcing practices, businessmen demand that the ban be relaxed and sanctions be lowered due to the impact they consider may have on thousands of jobs in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.
The business representatives who attended the meeting at the National Palace with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Monday came out happy.
It was agreed that the dialogue would continue throughout the week until a final agreement was presented next Monday.
In the original calendar, the Chamber of Deputies had planned to debate the reform this Monday and Tuesday "in open parliament", with the participation of organizations and experts, and to approve it on Thursday and then forward it to the Senate.
The current legislative period ends on December 15.
If it is not approved by then, the initiative will have to wait until February.
The president of the Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, José Manuel López Campos, present at the meeting, affirms that "it generates optimism on the part of the productive sector that there may be some adjustments and flexibility."
A spokesman for another of the associations believes that the Government "is going to have to back down" and that the reform "is not going to be prohibitive."
One of the concerns of the sector has to do with the application of heavy sanctions, of up to 4.8 million pesos, just over $ 200,000.
"What we want is certainty", says López Campos, "that is defined and regulated and that clarity does not allow discretionary applications."
Concamin, the industrial association that brings together more than one million companies, supports lowering fines and rejects the total ban on subcontracting.
His proposal, to which this newspaper has had access, asks the Ministry of Labor to defer the entry into force of the rule to January 2022, instead of January 2021, and maintain subcontracting as long as the obligations are met before the Social Security and the payment of the planned benefits - the Government has harshly criticized the massive dismissals at the end of the year to avoid paying the Christmas bonus.
So far, the government proposal only allows
outsourcing
for those activities that are not related to the company's business model.
The companies that are dedicated to offering these specialized services would need, according to the new norm, an authorization from the Ministry of Labor, to be renewed every three years.
The representatives of the private sector defend that the reform also specify the terms of issuance of these permits.
Despite apparent business optimism, it is not clear how much the government is willing to give up.
López Obrador confirmed this Tuesday "the good atmosphere of dialogue", but has not given details about the points of the law that are under debate.
“It is not yet known when this constructive dialogue will end so that a settlement can be reached.
What we want is for workers to be protected.
We do not want the strategies that were created during the neoliberal government to leave workers without benefits ”, he pointed out during the morning press conference.
Asked about a possible postponement of the entry into force of the rule, the president seemed to rule it out:
you can't keep stopping this.
Irregularities cannot continue to be tolerated ”.
Mexico has just over four million subcontracting jobs, which may be in danger of passing a strict ban, according to associations and experts.
After the government's announcement, the Business Coordinating Council, the country's main employer institution, warned that the proposal discouraged job creation at a delicate time.
Although there are signs of a moderate recovery, the coronavirus crisis has hit the Mexican economy hard, which plunged 17% in the second quarter, the tightest stage of lockdown.
Working poverty went from affecting 38% of the population in the third quarter of 2019 to 44% in the current one.
Faced with the alarm caused in the private sector, the Secretary of Labor, Luisa María Alcalde, promoter of the proposal, has rejected that the new regulations could affect employment.
"Far from bringing unemployment, it is going to build a more equitable, fairer, but also more productive labor market," he said last week in an interview with this newspaper.
The government itself has frequently resorted to outsourcing, another vice that López Obrador has promised to end two years after coming to power.
The Executive's relationship with the business community has been a sequence of sweet moments and hard clashes. Among the latter, the cancellation of the new Mexico City airport, the government's refusal to strengthen support for companies in the face of the economic crisis and the change in the energy model, which the private sector has taken to court, stand out. On the other side, the sweet, is the agreement reached on the pension system and two infrastructure plans with which the Executive has sought to ingratiate itself with businessmen. In a few days, we will see on which side the
outsourcing
norm falls
.