On the contrary, what is apparent is the need to maximize the capitalists' profit rate and increase their domination and control over the labor force as a way to mitigate their crisis.
This reform is based on three key points: reducing labor costs (via direct and indirect wages, a new compensation regime, and a reduction of employer contributions); limiting the collective action of workers (by conditioning union organization, decentralizing collective bargaining, obstructing workplace assemblies, limiting the right to strike, and defunding unions); disposing at will of others' time (via a time bank, splitting up vacations).
Precariousness and labor exploitation.
Since the 2008/2009 crisis, capital has not found a lasting solution, it has only been able to resort to imposing a dual society, and the forecasts are not encouraging.
Today, this is a battleground with the labor movement.
By Eduardo Lucita, a member of the Economists of the Left (EDI) collective.
A global trend
This reform is not alien to the trends that are sweeping the world today, dominated by a logic of capital accumulation and reproduction that expels labor from the market and relocates it in the informal sector or in open unemployment.
This is because since the 2008/2009 global crisis, neoliberal capitalism has no longer been able to recover the profit rates, accumulation, and growth of previous years.
There is nothing to negotiate in this bill, which only seeks to reduce costs and subject the worker to the needs of capital.
If there is no cyclical economic expansion, no reform will create jobs (2). In recent days, meetings are being convened in several cities across the country to organize mobilizations for the anniversary of the December 19 and 20, 2001 events, proposing to transform them into a major statement against labor reform and the plans of the Milei government.
Appendix:
Based on what has been read, heard, and discussed, I believe that a progressive and truly modernizing labor reform should, at a minimum, establish the following:
That it protect and favor the participation of the collective of workers/guaranteeing the right to assemble in the workplace, to branch-level collective bargaining, to reinstatement in retaliation for sanctions for labor claims, to work by the book, to partial strikes, and to strike. That it limit working time/reducing the workday to 6 hours, or to 4 days a week, considering the redistribution of existing working hours. Everything is pushing to lower the conditions of the formalized sector.
A unilateral project
The official discourse states that the different chapters that make up the bill aim to modernize labor relations and reduce the existing degrees of labor informality.
This is what explains why a high percentage of new jobs created in the world, and also among us, are in the informal sector.
The new forms of work organization. That it protect workers from platforms and the Popular Economy/recognizing their status as workers and granting them corresponding rights. That it favor and promote gender equity/establishing paternity leave, family care leave, and gender-based violence leave, as well as norms to prevent and repair sexual harassment in the workplace.
Source: https://argentina.indymedia.org/2025/12/13/reforma-laboral-paliativo-para-la-crisis-del-capital/
Without loss of wages or rights. That it protect the psycho-physical state of workers/creating Hygiene and Safety Commissions.
To do this, they have to devalue, but any devaluation is immediately passed on to prices. On the other hand, the counterpart of buying foreign currency to accumulate reserves is the issuance of pesos, but for these pesos not to pressure prices via higher demand, they must be sterilized by offering higher rates, which end up increasing the costs of labor capital and credits, which also pressure prices.
What is really needed is a reform that improves the living conditions of workers (1).
This reform is not just another link in the long offensive on labor that has been unfolding since the 1980s.
Now, with the induced drop in economic activity and the indiscriminate opening of imports, the growth of informality is accompanied by the destruction of jobs in the private formal sector.
Anti-worker and anti-union reform
This necessary stand in defense of the right to strike and organization, guaranteed by the National Constitution.
This reality has also been expressed among us for more than a decade, aggravated in the last two years under the Milei government.
It is precisely in the context of this lack of protection that workdays are extended indefinitely, precariousness expands, incomes are unstable, and labor rights are nullified.
This type of contradiction is also expressed in our capitalism, which adds its own characteristics.
Nothing other than to establish a lasting correlation of forces in favor of capital.
It is necessary to reject it in parliament and in the streets (2).
Eduardo Lucita is a member of the EDI collective – Economists of the Left-
Notes: (1) The FIT-U has just presented a bill to this effect, the "Labor Emergency Law and Promotion of Employment Law". For example, the issue of reserve accumulation, which both the IMF and the gurus of the City constantly agitate for.
Finally, this week, after letting various contents circulate to impose a common sense on the urgent need for labor reform, the Final Report of the Council of May was presented, from which several bills will be derived, including the Labor Modernization bill.
It cannot create employment and at the same time control inflation.
Defending the reduction of working time against the flexible scheduling that seeks to further disorganize the life of the worker and their family.
It is a qualitative leap for which the ruling classes have been seeking to achieve for decades.
None of these objectives derive from the presented project.
The government is trying to get out of this labyrinth from above, deepening the crisis, sinking the economy, and letting the market solve the problem of business competitiveness.
Greater productivity
For capital, any way out of the crisis requires strong increases in productivity, even in this time that shows great development of technological innovation.
It cannot resolve the crisis (its crisis) and create jobs at the same time.
The center of this offensive is the package of reforms proposed in the tax, criminal, educational, tax exemption, and modifications to the Glaciers Law, but its main component is the labor reform.
Everything contributes to inflation.
The government is on the offensive.
Establishing criteria for the prevention and detection of occupational diseases and accidents. That it contemplates the transformations resulting from the ongoing technological innovation/Impact on the collective of workers from the digitalization and increasing computerization of production and service processes.
