The delirious K project seeks a significant increase in the minimum wage, a reduction in working hours, and more regulations
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Kirchnerism will present a delirious "own" labor reform bill in Congress, conceived explicitly as a counterpoint to the modernization bill promoted by Javier Milei's government.
With the political backing of the corrupt Cristina Kirchner and support from union sectors of CGT and CTA, the initiative seeks to introduce a "counter-reform" that, according to its promoters, defends "labor rights" and reverses the supposed "wage deterioration," but, if approved, would end up causing serious damage to the economy.
However, the content of the bill proposes a scenario of higher costs for companies and negative effects on formal employment, in a labor market that has already been facing structural problems for decades.
Cristina Kirchner, condenada por corrupción.
The draft was coordinated by the Secretariat of Labor Relations of the Partido Justicialista, led by Deputy Vanesa Siley, and coordinated with senators from Unión por la Patria such as Mariano Recalde and Anabel Fernández Sagasti. The strategy aims to unify the opposition's stance in both chambers and directly confront the official diagnosis regarding employment, wages, and productivity.
Siley herself made the political focus of the bill explicit: "The first thing we're going to propose is a diagnosis." She added: "The Government says that making labor more flexible helps create registered employment. We're going to dismantle that cliché and reflect it in the rationale of our report."
Meanwhile, Kirchnerism keeps that Milei government's reform bill will not generate employment, but will instead mean a loss of rights and a setback in social protection, something that is false.
The delirious Kirchnerist labor reform
According to the K bloc's view, insufficient income has pushed people toward multiple jobs, informality, and the growth of work on digital platforms. "The main need is money, because the salary isn't enough. As a result, the working class is taking on more than one job or activity," said PJ sources who participated in the draft.
Cristina Kirchner.
Based on that reading, the bill proposes a broad package of changes: increase in the minimum wage, reduction of the workday, expansion of leave, and new regulations for platform work.
The wage chapter establishes a sharp increase in the Minimum, Living, and Mobile Wage to cover the cost of the Total Basic Basket, a definition that, in practice, would transfer higher costs to the employer sector and could leave thousands of workers out of the market or in informality, as has happened in recent years.
In terms of collective bargaining, the initiative advocates for "free" wage negotiations between unions and employers, without caps or conditions, in open contradiction to the official bill that seeks to link wage increases to productivity.
Another key point is the reduction of the weekly workday from 48 to 42 hours, with the goal of reaching 40 in the medium term. PJ argues that technological advances supposedly allow people to work less "without affecting production," something that doesn't match the reality of most Argentine companies. On the other hand, the K counter-reform also proposes to expand paternity leave to 90 days, equating it with maternity leave.
Overall, the Kirchnerist initiative seeks to establish a more regulated labor model than already exists, and far from resolving those imbalances, the counter-reform threatens to deepen them, adding rigidities and costs that could end up creating more problems than it intends to solve.
