Meeting of President López Obrador with authorities and businessmen, this Monday at the National Palace.Presidency of Mexico HANDOUT / EFE
The Mexican government and the private sector have reached an agreement this Monday on the prohibition of 'outsourcing'.
Subcontracting will only be allowed for specialized services and, in other cases, companies will have a quarter to integrate subcontracted personnel to the payroll, the Executive has informed.
The announcement comes four months after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador presented an initiative to reform this labor scheme, which he considers abusive.
The businessmen then warned of the economic impact of the measure in the midst of the coronavirus crisis and forced the opening of negotiations.
The result, however, leaves the bulk of the original proposal intact.
Now it is the turn of Congress to assess and vote on the initiative.
The agreement contemplates "the prohibition of the subcontracting of personnel" and restricts this practice to "specialized services other than the corporate purpose and the predominant economic activity of the company", reads a brief statement from the Government sparing in details.
In addition, the employment agencies must register in the public registry and take responsibility in the event of non-compliance with the norm.
In the same agreement, an increase of 135% in the amount of profits that companies have to pay to their workers has been announced.
The Secretary of Labor, Luisa Alcalde, has celebrated the pact as "one more step in favor of decent work."
“As a result of the dialogue, today we finalized in the National Palace the proposal to the legislature on subcontracting.
It is a historical debt with the women and men who for years have worked under this figure that has violated their rights ”, he wrote on his Twitter account.
The government has not yet explained when it will send the proposal to Congress for a vote.
The legislative calendar is marked by the elections next June, in which Morena, the president's party, plays the majority in the Chamber of Deputies.
The meeting in which the pact was sealed was attended by, in addition to the President and Mayor, representatives of the unions and the business sector, including the leader of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE) Carlos Salazar Lomelín.
The rejection of the private initiative to the initiative was key to delay its processing.
The original intention of the Government was to send the proposal to Congress at the end of 2020 for it to be approved before the close of sessions, but the president agreed to take the negotiation until this year and enrich it "through dialogue."
The result of the negotiation shows a favorable balance for the Executive.
The heart of the proposal presented last November - the general ban except for specialized services - remains.
And it is not clear at the moment which requests from the employers have been accepted.
The private initiative had asked the Government to soften the fines, considered too onerous, and to specify the deadlines for issuing permits to the employment agencies registered in the registry.
He also demanded that the entry into force of the reform be postponed to January 2022. This newspaper has not received responses from the main organizations in the sector.
Mexico has four and a half million contract workers, many of them in precarious conditions.
While the Government considers the ban as a tool to build a “more equitable” labor market, as the Mayor told EL PAÍS last November, analysts and businessmen have warned of its possible negative impact.
The Business Coordinating Council, the country's main employers' institution, said in November that the proposal discouraged job creation in the midst of a debacle, with a drop in GDP of 8.5% in 2020, and threatened to swell the ranks of the economy. informal, which already employs more than half of the workers.
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