Eckenner Recalde Álava, legislator for Pichincha and member of the ADN alliance, assumed the presidency of the National Assembly's Commission on Labor Rights and Social Security. The appointment was formalized on May 26, 2025, amid the new legislative period.
Recalde is a lawyer with a degree from the Central University of Ecuador and is currently serving his third parliamentary term. In the past, he was a member of the Workers' Commission and held administrative positions in local governments and public companies.
During his first term, he was investigated by the Ethics Commission for alleged irregular charges to his work team, known as "diezmos". Despite this, he ran again and managed to be reelected after the "muerte cruzada," as part of the PID-Mover alliance.
Between 2023 and 2025, he served as the second vice president of the Assembly and as a member of the Economic Regime Commission. He will now lead one of the most sensitive commissions in the Legislature, responsible for reforming public and private labor regulations, as well as the structure of the social security system.
Eckenner Recalde
The commission is composed of ten members, five of whom belong to the official ADN bloc. These are: Paola Jaramillo Zurita, Christopher Jaramillo Gómez, Naila Quintana Tapia, and Elizabeth Vega Segura. Carmen Tiupul from Pachakutik joins them.
In the opposition are Roberto Cuero Medina, Humberto Alvarado Espinel, Fernando de la Torre, and Juan Molina Saldaña, all linked to the correísta bloc Citizen Revolution. This configuration gives ADN a functional majority to promote structural reforms.
The ruling party seeks to reactivate the debate on pending labor reforms, as well as to review the conditions of the IESS and the informal sector. The commission could become a stage for confrontations between models that promote labor flexibility and others that insist on state interventionism.
Recalde's presidency of this labor commission reflects the new correlation of forces in the Assembly. With an officialist majority, opportunities arise topromote modern reforms in the labor field, despite resistance from sectors that defend inefficient bureaucratic structures inherited from socialism.
