By: Paloma Valencia
What is the problem that the labor reform project tries to solve? Seen in its results, it is a project that seeks to improve the conditions of Colombians who have formal jobs, especially in large companies, with unions. It can be considered a good purpose, however, to do so, it hits small and medium-sized businesses in the country hard. And what is even more serious, it makes it very difficult to create new jobs and impossible the formalization process that we need so much.
Although our unemployment figure has been falling, we have 3.4 million unemployed. 17.7% of young people are unemployed and 2.6 million young people neither study nor work. For none of them is the reform. The generation of employment is difficult; it increases labor costs, makes layoffs impossible, introduces access barriers -additional costs- by sector.
The new jobs that are created will be informal. Increasing the more than 12.9 million Colombians who are today in the informal sector. The reform could bring about a very big crisis in many sectors, which could even cause a decrease in formal employment. Studies estimate that these changes would cost companies an additional 31.44% of their labor costs (16% for salary, 2.84% for Sunday work, 0.40% for nighttime surcharge, 2.19% for Sena bonding, 0.55% for paternity leave, 9.46% for 42-hour day). The labor cost for an SME would go from 87.5 million pesos to 115 million pesos per month.
The reform increases paternity leave from 2 weeks to 12 weeks in 2025. It requires salary increases every year due to inflation if they earn less than 2SMLV. Increases the surcharge payment for Sundays and holidays from 75% to 100%, shifts night work from 9 to 6 in the afternoon. It sounds very good for workers, but what will happen to small businesses whose working hours are at night, such as restaurants, bars, and health services? The prices of the entire chain could increase, generating more inflation and many businesses could go bankrupt, or jobs could become informal.
One of the most serious issues is that outsourcing is ending. Companies must hire all their employees for an indefinite term.
In addition, they must offer all legal and extralegal benefits to the entire production chain. For example, if the communications or the security or cleaning service is contracted with someone else; You must directly hire all these employees or in matters that are not of your company name, you must guarantee that that other company pays with the same conditions that the company has for its workers.
The reform prohibits the union contract and there will be negotiations by branch. This is equivalent to a union being able to negotiate all the legal benefits for an entire sector. Unions of large companies will say what benefits employees of small companies should have. This will kill corner stores and small businesses. It is anti-competitive: It will be the easiest way for large companies to bankrupt all the competition.
Unionists may also have access to financial statements, list of affiliates and discounts. They will have all the confidential information of the company which they could sell to the competition. This reform is the end of small unions and collective agreements. Large unions will even be able to restrict their union members from joining other unions.
The strike may be individual and the State may guarantee it in all its forms. The format of the “first lines” of the 2021 strike is taken to the companies. Whoever does not want to work can stay on strike. Neither does the project think of new forms of labor relations in the 21st century. Nothing about new technologies or remote work. There is only one restriction for delivery men – such as Rappi – where they will now be required to work a 48-hour schedule and limit the practice of working in other trades. Nearly 80,000 delivery men and 75,000 businesses will be affected, and they are already protesting.