translated from Spanish: Funes de Rioja: “Protect the worker, but don’t drown the companies”

Daniel Funes de Rioja, vice president of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA) and president of the Coordinator of the Food Industries (Copal), spoke on Tuesday in radio statements to the need for unemployment insurance “that protects the worker but does not drown and leads to bankruptcy to companies”.

Its definitions are given in the context of the 60-day extension in the prohibition for companies to carry out layoffs without just cause or under the pretext of force majeure decreed by the Government, a measure taken to counteract the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic. 
In this sense, Funes de Rioja wondered “what can an entrepreneur who cannot open or does not have clients do, and who have to face all the obligations of work”.

“I’ve been saying for a long time that Argentina has to have unemployment insurance. Since 2001 we have been with an economic and employment emergency most of the years,” said the business benchmark in dialogue with El Destape Radio. “When there is no containment network, what an employer who cannot open or has no clients can do and has to face all work obligations, cannot dismiss or suspend,” he said, disdifferentiated himself from the government decree.
In this regard, he considered that “structural solutions must be sought for Argentina, we must have instruments that protect the worker but do not drown, that do not lead to bankruptcy of companies”.

When asked about the agreed pay cut for suspended employees, he said that “it’s not that workers are being paid wages” but that it’s a measure “to protect it in an incomplete, social security-lacking system.” On the other hand, the entrepreneur projected that “there are many activities that will take a long time to recover” after the coronavirus pandemic.

Asked about the Labour and Production Assistance (ATP) program, he noted that “the program has very strict regulation and for companies of more than 800 people there is a committee of ministers doing the assessment,” which, he added, “they are not giving anything to anyone.” “In industrialized central countries this support or support is received from Lufthansa executives to the last person,” he concluded. In this note:

Original source in Spanish