Large multinationals start 2025 topping the list of companies that lay off discriminatoryly, relying on the new “Bases Law” which is a tool that the government gave them to try to validate the layoffs for reasons of race, religion, nationality, ideology, political or union opinion, sex, economic position, social condition or physical characteristics with the sole sanction of paying aggravated compensation.
According to the new article 245 bis of the Employment Contract Law, the discriminated worker will only have the right to be paid an increase in compensation of 50% of what is due for dismissal. But “the arranged dismissal, in all cases, will produce the definitive termination of the employment relationship for all purposes.” I mean, The discriminatory dismissal will be valid.
This new article of the Employment Contract Law establishes serious discrimination against workers, depriving them of one of the most basic human rights, the right to equalityby taking away the protection that the anti-discrimination law establishes for all people: the right of the victim to have discrimination stop.
let’s think an example: a company decides that it no longer wants to see people of a certain religion in its premises (or any other reason such as race, religion, nationality or physical characteristics) and places a sign prohibiting these people from entering the premises; He also fires his company’s employees for that reason. Clients will have the right to go to a judge to stop the discriminatory act and take the situation back to the moment before this prohibition, ordering the businessman to allow them entry to the premises and pay them compensation, applying anti-discrimination law 23,593. While dismissed workers will not be able to claim that the discriminatory dismissal be annulled, returning the situation to the moment before the dismissal and that they be reinstated in their job. They will only be entitled to be paid 50% more compensation.
A true affront to the constitutional right to equality imposed with the corrupt Bases Law and the Senator Kueider scandal.
But this is just beginning. It is not defined that legislation that, in addition to being corrupt, is unconstitutional, can remain firm and be imposed in reality.especially if we fight to defend each dismissal and dismissal and carry out a great campaign to annul it.
Multinationals discriminate again
Since the law was approved we have already had several cases. Of attacks but where the response is already organized. Some of the first dismissed “without cause” were those of former union delegates Javier Aparicio and Alfredo Vera of the German transnational Volkswagen. The dismissed workers held protests at the gate of the Pacheco Plant in common with labor, student, social, political and cultural organizations. The company received a first judicial setback when Court No. 70 ordered Javier Aparicio reinstated in his job, although so far he has not complied with it.
Ten worker layoffs followed. Linde Praxair Pacheco including opposition leaders, among them Maximiliano Areco, one of the workers who was fired and reinstated by the labor justice system when his dismissal was declared null and void due to discrimination. Faced with the attack, all the workers declared a “permanent assembly” and strikes that achieved solidarity from other plants, achieving ten reinstatements, but the company insists on layoffs.
During the month of January, during a break in activity due to the judicial fair, the transnational Pilkington Automotive He would have left a list of 12 workers at the gate, preventing them from entering when they returned from their vacation, notifying some of them of their dismissal. One of those on the “black list” is Ruben Farias, who had been fired by the company and in 2018 the court declared the dismissal null and void because it was considered discriminatory and ordered his reinstatement. The company agreed to reinstate him but gave him tasks in another position outside the industrial plant. With the new law, the company will want to fire him “without cause” in the hope that a judicial claim for reinstatement will not be favorable to the worker. This advance by Pilkington adds to its refusal to comply with the ruling of the Labor Chamber that forces it to reinstate the worker Jorge González, also discriminatorily dismissed and of whom actions are carried out at the door of the Plant to demand his reinstatement and against the layoffs.
Now the transnational has also joined Shellwhich has just dismissed with article 245, “without cause”, six workers’ representatives, three of them had already been fired in 2014, who the labor justice ordered their reinstatement for having been discriminatorily dismissed. It is clear: Shell attacks those who defend labor rights, the users of large service companies and support neighbors against environmental pollution. Among those fired, two are part of the Orange union and two are part of the Pink Union List.
The objective is clear: companies use this unconstitutional “benefit” that the Milei government granted them to move forward with the dismissals of leaders and then impose on the entire workforce plans for greater productivity and work rates with lower labor “cost.” . It is a way to discipline those who want to organize against “the largest adjustment plan in history,” as Milei says. That claims do not arise led by rank-and-file, honest workers who defend workers’ rights that are not defended by union leadership. That’s why The CGT let the article pass and is doing nothing against these attacks.
But it is also clear that in the face of these attempts to leave those who are on the side of their colleagues and not the businessmen on the street, a fight is beginning from the anti-bureaucratic sectors. This is demonstrated by Volkswagen, Praxair, Pilkington and Shell, just as workers in food, subways, tires, commerce, aeronautics and other companies did before. Far from magnifying our enemies, it is important to see these examples and how they can join those who are being part of the resistance to Milei’s war plan, as we saw in teachers, state institutions, sites of memory, hospitals, oil producers, Airlines , drivers, sugar workers and many more.
During January, the Fair Room of the Chamber of Labor ordered the company FADEMI SA to reinstate the 25 workers dismissed in retaliation for having participated in a strike called by the Zárate Chemical and Petrochemical Industries Union (SPIQyP), a ruling that was adds to the one dictated by the same Chamber on January 14 when, faced with the threat of more than three thousand layoffs in the AFIP and CUSTOMS, it granted a precautionary measure urging the Government of Javier Milei to refrain from adopting measures that violate the guarantee of stability for workers.
We must surround each struggle of these attacked sectors and each discriminated worker with solidarity, so that they are not left on the streets. With his co-workers, solidarity organizations and demanding that the unions not allow these attacks.
A campaign against this brutal advance in discrimination
The validity of article 245 bis is a true legal and democratic scandal.
Prominent jurists, law professors, human rights organizations such as Mario Elffman, Roberto Gargarella, Eduardo Tavani, Adolfo Matarrese, Matías Cremonte, Mariana Amartino, Mariana Katz, Maria Victoria Moyano Artigas, Alejandrina Barri, the Association of Labor Lawyers, among others, have begun to raise their voices against this aberrant situation in our country promoting a petition that we invite you to sign at this link.
The fight to declare the unconstitutionality of article 245 bis has just begun and has many tasks ahead. We have to disseminate in all workplaces, in universities, bar associations and organizations around the world, that we are facing an anti-union, authoritarian and anti-democratic advance that goes back 100 years and cannot be allowed.
And we have to launch a great campaign, national and international, that shows the government and employers that we are going to confront this discriminatory advance until we defeat it. A campaign that brings together all those who believe in labor rights, equality before the law and human rights. A campaign of statements, of solidarity but also of the broadest mobilization of workers, students, popular assemblies, retirees and everyone who has been standing up against Milei and the businessmen to tear down the disastrous article 245 bis of the LCT and in perspective the entire Bases law and the adjustment plans of the Milei Government.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
