This Thursday it was known final text of the labor reform that Milei sent to the Senate to be discussed in the extraordinary sessions of Congress. It implies a fstrong attack for the working class: extends the working day, facilitates dismissals, limits basic rights such as strikes, weakens agreements and enables the hours bank, everything under the discourse of “modernization”. These measures, aligned with the business and IMF demandsdeepen precariousness and put historical achievements at risk, affecting both formal workers and those who already live in labor instability.
Faced with this scenario, a collective and massive response becomes essential. Various combative unions, social organizations, student centers and political forces They already call for mobilization on December 18 to stop the attack and demand a national strike with a fight plan. Organization in places of work and study will be key to facing a reform that seeks to further subordinate those who live from their work.
From La Izquierda Diario we are going to analyze the main points included in the project. On this occasion, We talked about the “hour bank” and overtime.
Bank of hours and overtime: what the current law says and what they want to change with the labor reform
The debate on the labor reform promoted by the government reveals a central point of tension: control of working time. The project modifies essential aspects of the Labor Contract Law (LCT), especially the overtime regime and the organization of the day through the hours bank.
Specifically, the current law establishes that It is the collective agreements that establish how overtime is paid and defined. But now, the labor reform opens the door for This negotiation can be done between employer and employeewith the possibility of extending working days and shortening others to compensate, without the payment of 50 or 100% established by law for overtime. Overtime is not eliminated in the letter of the reform, but there remains a gray area that enables a negotiation between employee and employer that we well know, It never happens on equal terms.
Let’s see.
He current article 197 bis establishes that only the Collective agreements may provide for the “overtime regime, bank of hours, compensatory francs, among other institutes related to the working day.” In this way, any relevant alteration of the working day is negotiated collectively, with union intervention and under the protective logic of labor law.
Besides, Article 201 of the current Labor Contract Law requires the payment of surcharges of 50% or 100% for overtime hours: “The employer must pay […] a fifty percent (50%) surcharge […] and one hundred percent (100%) on Saturdays after thirteen (13) hours, Sundays and holidays.” These surcharges function as an instrument of prevention: the law makes it more expensive to extend the working day to avoid abuses and to compensate for the additional wear and tear on the worker.
And what does the reform say? Introduce a drastic twist. His article 42 proposes to replace article 197 bis on the other hand where it is stated that “The employer and the worker may voluntarily agree on a compensation regime for overtime work.which must be formalized in writing.” This implies the individualization of the bank of hours, which already exists in the country but which they now intend to generalize in an agreement between unequal parties.
The same rule adds: “To this end, there may be available an overtime regime, hours bank, compensatory francs, among other institutes related to the working day.” The company thus obtains a much greater margin to reorganize working time without going through the filter of union negotiation in the sector.
Patricia Bullrich (now a national senator) defended this change this Thursday at the Techint Group’s Propymes seminar in a talk she had with Paolo Rocca, the group’s CEO. There he said: “We have put together a system that young people really like, which is the voluntary hours bank. The hour bank is ‘I want to work from Monday to Thursday, I don’t want to work on Friday. Well, on Mondays I work 12 hours, on Tuesday I work 12 hours, I have 4 and 4 extra and I take them on Friday and I don’t work on Friday.” But there is nothing “voluntary” about it.
Because? The “voluntariness” mentioned in the project does not correct the structural asymmetry of power between worker and employer. Faced with the real possibility of losing their job, the worker is in worse conditions to refuse what the company proposes.
Labor Reform: the “spirit” is very clear here. They enable the hours bank by employee-employer “voluntary agreement” instead of by Collective Agreement. Between individuals there is NO WILL, there is IMPOSITION from the EMPLOYER. The WORKER has strength COLLECTIVELY. https://t.co/VyP2QPAGAV pic.twitter.com/UpTaIhxf4R
— Jesica Calcagno (@Jesi_mc) December 11, 2025
“All the projects until now talked about the creation of a bank of hours through collective bargaining. This project adds that this agreement can be individual”, explained the president of the Association of Labor Lawyers of Latin America Matías Cremonte at La Izquierda Diario. “Logically there is no possibility of individual agreement in such an unequal and then the overtime will disappear because it works like a bank of hours where there is a debit of hours to fulfill a totality,” added the lawyer.
That’s not all. The project also incorporates a relevant detail: the requirement of “a reliable control method that allows both parties to record the hours actually worked and the hours available for the worker to enjoy.” At first glance, this might seem like an improvement. But in practice, Time control systems are usually under company management. In many areas there is no possibility of independent auditing, which places the worker in a defenseless situation against possible manipulations of the registry.
All this has a direct impact on the daily life of the worker. With the hour bank, The company can set 12-hour days one day, 4 another, and 10 the next. The new article 198 (modified in article 43 of the reform) expressly confirms this logic of extreme flexibility by stating that “the bank of hours may be used in order to compensate the longest working day on one day with the shortest working day on another, as long as the legal maximum weekly working day is not exceeded.” The weekly limit works as a limit, but internal distribution is left to productive needs, taking a 12 hour break between day and day, as the only limit.
Another serious consequence arises in the economic aspect. This model enables reorganize working time without generating overtime like the current ones, allowing, for example, to reduce the workload when activity drops or to generate days of rest as a “compensation”. Although the reform does not eliminate article 201 of the LCT, which establishes the payment of overtime at 50 or 100%, through a “voluntary agreement” between employer and worker, They can exchange that money for hours not worked.
This scheme transforms the working day into a company adjustment variable. The worker loses predictability and stability. Your family life, your health and your rest are subordinated to productive demand. The organization of existence becomes uncertain because each day may involve a different number of hours of work and a different amount of money that enters the family pocket.
That’s why we started talking about “rubber work days.” We are not exaggerating. The reform consolidates a model in which the worker’s time is stretched or contracted according to business convenience, without the compensatory cost imposed by the current overtime regime.
The official argument maintains that the individual agreement offers protection because the worker decides. But the structural inequality between the parties prevents the worker from being able to reject a bank of hours imposed as a condition for entering or maintaining a job. The supposed “contractual freedom” operates as a fiction that conceals a real transfer of power to the company.
“The project seeks to individualize labor ties. For example, it is possible to establish banks of hours or other forms of flexible working hours, the division of vacations and their granting at any time of the year by individual agreement, without any type of union intervention”as explained in the report “First systematization of the labor reform”, by the Institute of Studies and Training of the Autonomous CTA. This is intended, as the report states, to “strengthening labor discipline in the workplace.”
Specifically, The labor reform implies a profound setback in terms of protection of working time. It reduces the payment of overtime, makes the distribution of the day more flexible and leaves the worker exposed to a scheme based on the fluctuating needs of production. The hour bank, as proposed by the project, weakens the eight-hour day and reconfigures the value of human time based on business profitability. Weakens collective bargaining, enabling the agreement between employee and employer. Under the discourse of modernization, the project advances historical rights and places working time again under employer control.
As pointed out Myriam Bregman, national representative of the PTS/Left Front: “They want to generalize what they call an hour bank. It means that one day they can call you for four hours, another ten, and another twelve. For workers, it becomes impossible to organize life, be with family, study or rest.”
There is an alternative path to create work with rights for all
In these disputes it is important to point out that there is another possible proposal: reduce the working day to 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, so that the available work is distributed and we can access employment with rights. If this measure were applied in large companies, around a million new jobs could be created instantly. With salaries that cover the real cost of living. With the effectiveness of contracted, monotributistas and informal workers. With a public works plan that builds the missing schools, hospitals and green spaces, creating registered employment. And with the ignorance of the debt to allocate those resources to social needs. It is viable, but it implies affecting the privileges of a few, not the rights of the majority.
In the midst of this fight, we also need rebuild our organizational tools: bodies of delegates, internal commissions and unions. And in order to impose our own solution, we need to advance even further. The PJ is responsible for both Milei’s promotion and the adjustments applied and, in addition, defends the interests of a business sector. We workers must have a real weight in the political life of the country by building our own political force: a party of the working class, without bosses or bureaucracy, that promotes a program so that the crisis is faced by those who cause it: the powerful and the IMF.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
