Buenos Aires, March 6 (NA) – Immediately after the Labor Modernization Law was enacted, supposed plans for staff reduction began to circulate within ANSES, which union sources estimate at 2,500 layoffs. The report, circulated Thursday night, spoke of 2,400 dismissals and 1,000 early retirements, plus 400 employees on medical leave, as collected by the Argentine News Agency. It is mentioned that in the coming days, a voluntary retirement offer will be made for those up to 62 years old, with a maximum of 25 years of service, at 90% of the gross salary without income tax and in one installment. "We will see if with these measures they also force the directors who have long since met the requirements to retire, but never leave," hopes the staff who feel threatened by the impending rationalization. It is still unclear how the contingency of unemployed people who do not have retirement age but have contributions will be covered. The Universal Pension for the Elderly (PUAM) under observation The Universal Pension for the Elderly (PUAM) covers those over 65 who do not have any pension or retirement, and represents 80% of a minimum, which is updated by mobility. It includes health coverage and PAMI services, and they can access the collection of family allowances. The objection is that it gives the same treatment to those with incomplete contributions as to those with none, for example, a foreigner. On social networks, leaders of the ANSES Workers' Union (SECASFPI) deployed this Friday the numbers that have become public, although without confirmation, and denounced a process of "institutional wear." They also questioned the labor reform, which opens the door to these layoffs and warned of a loss of rights for workers. The union secretary Carlos Ortega detailed: "I am a survivor of the nineties, and a similar process is gestating: first they wear down the organism from the bureaucracy, where they tell us 'we close this office, we no longer do this, we no longer do that' and with that they are wearing it down." The UDAI, empty In this sense, the external offices where the Integral Attention Units (UDAI) operated, which channeled in-person procedures, were left empty after they stopped managing retirements due to the non-renewed moratorium law, and almost as if they have no work. In general terms, although many contracts were not renewed, in ANSES there is still a significant number of people who continue under this type of labor relationship. Inside the buildings, rumors intensified today and sowed unease among people who were looking for any information that the union delegates might have. "Something is coming," they got as a response. "Since we are governed by the Labor Contract Law, it was obvious that we had to wait for the labor reform to dismiss," they reflected. The intimate buzz The existence of a decree that is about to be signed in the Chief of Cabinet's Office is taken for granted, whereby the employees would be transferred to the regime of the ministries, which, like most of the public sector, adheres to the National Public Employment System (SINEP) and not the Labor Contract Law, as is the case with ANSES. The sequence seems to mark a path that begins with a legal redefinition of the organism, if it leaves its current orbit where it is considered an indefinite-term contract, applying this rule together with the Collective Labor Agreement, and it is subject to the law of ministries. The dimension of the downsizing will be given by the scope that the upcoming pension reform will have in the organism's structure, of how many tasks it will retain and how many will be transferred to the private orbit. Currently, within the system it administers, there are a little more than 6.03 million retirees and pensioners, according to data from the statistical bulletin of the Undersecretariat of Social Security. It is even speculated that in what remains of ANSES, new personnel will be incorporated to complete the grid. The net downsizing will surely be coordinated with the resulting pension reform, the return to the private retirement system, changes in the PUAM system and the extension of the retirement age.
