Last March, the Minister of Labour, Nicolás Monckeberg , presented with hype and cymbals the reform to the national Service of training and employment, under the premise of a “new Sence more transparent, with better trainings and focused on the work of the future”.
What the minister did not reveal at that time is that one of the main articulators of this reform was Bernardo Ramírez bathed, who operated as a ministerial advisor in the design of the project.
The big problem is that Ramirez bathed was general manager of the Training Corporation of the Chilean Chamber of Construction, an entity considered the largest broker of tax franchises. And according to all the actors in the market, this OTIC is the great winner of the reform proposed by the Government of Sebastián Piñera.
The consultant
Bernardo Ramírez is a commercial engineer by profession and was even mentioned as potential director of the Sence at the beginning of the Piñerista government. Finally, the move was not concretized. His was of lower profile and according to the records of the Sence on the page of transparency (updated only up to greater than 2018) was hired to fees to “advise in direction in the field of training”.
According to the registration available on that page, it served between April 9th from 2018 to August 31st with a monthly salary of $4,453,531. But once he served in the ministry, and the project was admitted to the Chamber of Deputies, he returned to the OTIC of the Chilean Chamber of Construction.
“This general manager of the Chilean Chamber of construction was hired as an adviser to the Ministry of Labor to work just to do this project again Sence, elaborated it, and returned the same place where it was before,” accuses Communist deputy Hugo Gutiérrez.
But not only the links between the Ministry and the House have the new ministerial advisor in sight. According to the Sence and sources of the sector, Ramirez bathed has “glass roof” in labor matters because as a legal representative of the Training Corporation of the Chilean Chamber of Construction has been sued in the direction of I work for a series of infringements such as situations of discrimination, harassment and violation of workers ‘ rights.
This is in addition to an administrative fine against the entity that is headed for “liquidating training actions without having previously paid the respective invoices”.
From its passage through the government entity, it is also questioned that it has had access to commercial and financial information of its competitors. Also, the interior of the service is pointed out as responsible for the disconnections of several officials who were exonerated during the Piñerista administration. Not only that: during the period of Ramirez bathed in the Sence, the Foundation Corporation-the OTEC, the training organism of the Chilean Chamber of the construction-was benefited with several millions via direct allocation of the service.
Law to measure
For Hugo Gutiérrez, in this way, the Sence reform project “is a spurious law tailored to the Chilean chamber of Construction. The law should be called Monckeberg Law-Chilean Chamber of Construction. Here there is a contradiction of interests and trafficking of influences at the origin of this law. ”
The criticisms against the bill elaborated by the current administration have been led by the Association of technical Training Organizations of Chile A.G. (AGMO). According to this entity, the reform “aims to concentrate the industry in the most powerful guilds of the country, allowing the vertical integration of Chileans”.
One of the main criticisms is that the project establishes a system of co-payment that, as they point out in the sector, harms smaller companies.
“The new SENCE law will leave more than 600,000 workers untrained, as a co-payment is incorporated that punishes lower-income contributors and sanctions them without their right to access a perfecting of vital skills for the working world. Among the injured workers are the nearly 5 million who have incomplete middle school and who, unable to access training, will be in a situation of inequality, “they point out in AGMO.
In short, according to Congressman Gutiérrez, “small businesses will not be able to give training to their workers and thus more than 100,000 trainers and people linked to small OTEC will be unemployed and the training will focus on the big ones for the copay.”
