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Peru's President Alan Garcia passes law to benefit subcontracted workers

Living in Peru
Israel J. Ruiz

Peru's president Alan Garcia approved a law on Monday evening that sets stricter limits on labor outsourcing.

The law, which was a major union demand, was approved by congress in late May.

According to new contracting requirements, companies will have to make sure that the contractor firms they hire are abiding by labor laws.

Furthermore, contracted workers will be allowed to complain directly to main companies.

A national registry containing the names of contracting companies will also be created and companies that abuse workers' rights will be penalized.

Once the law was passed, President Garcia affirmed that hundreds of thousands of workers would be protected. He added that now there existed contracting laws that could not be avoided or evaded by companies.

Garcia explained that many contracting companies in Peru had not been paying workers fair wages and had been hiring people without providing them with social security or a pension fund.

"We want Peru to grow for everyone, to advance for its workers, and to eradicate and eliminate slavery in the 21st century," said Garcia, explaining that employees of contractors would now have more rights.

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# Splaktar says :
June 24, 2008 [ 22:19 ]

So this law just tries to provide an infrastructure and guidelines for enforcement of existing labor laws?  I don't see anything here that includes any changes to existing labor laws.

Also this appears to only apply to companies that do contract labor.

So employees can now complain to their company without having to go through the Union?

"not been paying workers fair wages and had been hiring people without providing them with social security or a pension fund."

So are there any other labor laws covered here or is fair wages and social security or pension the only thing that this law cares about?

# Cris says :
June 25, 2008 [ 9:54 ]

Splaktar, this applies to a lot of companies. For example, Telefonica outsources all their installation/repair work to another company. Now employees of this service company will be able to complain directly to Telefonica. Hope that clears things up a bit.

I'm not really sure this law will help because it is generally the main company's fault anyway as they use 3rd-party companies to cut costs. Hopefully, it will lead to positive change though.

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