After winning the mid-term elections, the government announced that it would send a labor law reform bill to parliament. Its main code, the Labor Contract Law (LCT No. 20,744), dates back to 1974, although it has been amended over time. Does anyone remember labor law?
In the 1940s, when the debate over social rights reached its climax in Japan, the 1949 constitutional amendment incorporated so-called “second generation rights” related to labor protections such as decent conditions and fair remuneration, participation in trade unions, and social security into the supreme article.
Thus, a short time later, and partly due to a coup d’état, a new constitutional amendment was made in 1957, invalidating the 1949 provisions, mainly because of doubts about the supremacy granted to the executive branch. Nevertheless, voters left social rights safe and enshrined them in recognized art. 14 bis, which remains to this day.
This amendment to our Constitution not only emphasized the full validity of these rights, but also established it as an obligation for Congress to enact a “labor and social security” code “in consolidated or separate institutions”, according to current art. Co., Ltd. 75 12.
It must be emphasized that the essence of codification is the grouping of the subject laws into a single organized text, with the ability to unify positions and facilitate the application of the law. But codification above all means giving the law stability and continuity over time. Unfortunately, when it comes to labor issues, This constitutional debt is now 68 years behind.
The rules governing labor are now spread throughout the legal system. Examples include the LCT, but also the Occupational Health and Safety Act (No. 19,587), the Occupational Risks Act (No. 24,557), and more recently the Telework Act (No. 27,555). Each law also has amendment and repeal provisions between the ordinance and the resolution.
In general, the decentralization of regulations, which mainly applies to the cases we are dealing with today, involves legal security issues both in the judicial and legal field, as well as in the economic and commercial field. Because we don’t know if a new government is coming to change the rules of the game, which scares investment and the status of our republic. As an area that is difficult to predict.
At a time when we are discussing the renewal and reform of Argentina’s labor regime, it would be very healthy for our country to proceed with the establishment of labor laws as imposed by our Constitution, to establish general principles that apply across the board, to adopt jurisprudential standards, and to bet on the modernization of labor in line with the provisions of our Constitution and the international treaties we have signed.
The institutional maturity that the ratification of the Labor Code signals to society and the world will open the door not only to the continuation of other codifications, such as social security and taxes, but also to the arrival of foreign and local capital that will bring the much-needed economic growth that Argentine citizens need. We can never go back to improvisation and underdeveloped laws.
Co-editor of the Forensic Science Journal of the University of Salvador
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