MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Macri strikes deal with business leaders to suspend layoffs but Congress criticizes
Argentine President Mauricio Macri has struck a temporary deal with local businessmen and some unions to suspend layoffs for 90 days. Macri's announcement of the deal on Monday comes as job cuts and high inflation rate are worrying many Argentines and Congress is in the process of approving an anti-layoffs bill that doubles severance pay and bans layoffs without cause for 180 days. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesFinally...a real president. Listens and talks to everyone. This country should be so thankful he won the election.
May 10th, 2016 - 11:33 am - Link - Report abuse 0@1 “ A real president” who is so weak as to be overridden by a massive margin on this counterproductive measure, by the populist legislature that really runs the country.
May 10th, 2016 - 02:22 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I've stressed this over and over:
May 10th, 2016 - 02:37 pm - Link - Report abuse 0If rg wants to at least maintain its position at the top of the 3rd world countries it must raise worker productivity and concentrate on value added manufacture.
I hear a lot of talk about populism today.
Does anyone know the antithesis of this term
Hint: It begins with an E.
Manufacturing is not something that Argentina can do on a world-competition basis. Manufacturing in Argentina only works for domestic and protected regional markets. Even among the Sudaca countries, Argentina's massive thirst for high wages and Greek-like benefits will keep them from competing with manufacturing in China, Thailand, India, Mexico, etc. “Industria Argentina” only sells where regional treaties severely disadvantage extraregional products or where the Argie government provides large subsidies.
May 10th, 2016 - 05:50 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Take Toyota's position on this: manufacturing costs are so high in Argentina that Toyota is starting to export from its assembly plants in India to Argentina. Toyota cannot trust Industria Argentina to reliably produce a large portion of the components for their vehicles so those have to be built elsewhere and sent to Argentina to be bolted on. (The ultimate irony: some Toyota models use components built in the USA, shipped to Toyota Argentina for semi-skilled assembly). Worker productivity and efficiency in Argentina are comparatively low. And many Toyota models sold in neighbouring Chile are too expensive to assemble in Argentina so they are built in Asia and shipped to Chile.
Compensation (loaded) costs for manufacturing in Mexico are about US$7 per hour. In Argentina, the compensation costs for manufacturing are over US$20 an hour.
Argentine workers would rather burn down their factories than accept anything less than 25 percent annual increases.
So no, Argentina's manufacturing sector is not anytime soon going to competitive on an unrestricted-world-trade basis, even though Macrismo may wish it so.
Maquillidora in the north for simple electromechanical assembly - full absorption per gaap was your figure back in '98.
May 10th, 2016 - 06:59 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@5 I have a copy of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for year 2011 which shows average compensation costs for Mexico in all manufacturing sectors, with wages plus benefits at a mean of US$6.47. Their stats are consistent with other sources. The 2014 data shows closer to US$7 per hour for Mexico and these numbers include automotive, electronic, textile, and other manufacturing.
May 10th, 2016 - 07:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Argentina revealed its willingness to become noncompetitive during the period 2010 to 2013 when high inflation and economic mismanagement drove the loaded labour rates for Argentina from about US$12 to nearly US$20 an hour, for the range of manufacturing sectors. Since 2013 the average loaded compensation costs here have gone over the US$20/hour mark. This does not include the cost-to-fire an employee (severance), which for Argentina is the highest in the region and contributes to the unwillingness of employers here to take on additional employees. So don't count on Argentina becoming any sort of competitive manufacturing force anytime soon. In fact, the recent and continuing trend has been decreased competitiveness and lower productivity.
France is the thick of it as we speak.
May 10th, 2016 - 08:18 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@7 France - thick of what? World's sixth largest economy. High productivity in manufacturing. Pumping out those Michelin tyres. France's manufacturing hourly compensation rates are considerably lower than those of Australia.
May 10th, 2016 - 09:46 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Clueless.
May 11th, 2016 - 04:13 am - Link - Report abuse 0WHEN REALITY KILLS FALSE RELATES.
May 12th, 2016 - 04:12 pm - Link - Report abuse 0As i said some weeks ago, this government is so useless that it can't even create a coherent and common relate, which helps the members of the actual administration to justify the reactionary and regressive measures that they took. Macri often repeats that Argentina neather grows nor creates jobs since 5 years ago, however, including Jorge Todesca, the new director of indec, published the grows of the last 4 years, and they showed that there were economic growths since 2011 untill 2015. Even if what Macri said was true, most of the measures taken by the new admninistration, just provoked a ressesive scenario, that's why, Argentina's growth last years was 2,2%, according to indec, however now, we are on ressession.
Something simillar happened with the project which is being discussed at the lower house, Macri and his useless ministers have repeated that we aren't going through a crisis with layoffs, however, if he had to beg his businessmen friends not to fire workers, is because we are actually living a crisis, due since he took office, his administration fired a lot of people from different statal entities, which is something that finally had a big repercussion in the private sector too, anyway, in some way it was obvious that he was going to do all he can, to impede the opposition to take a politic advantage with a new law.
#10 axel arg
May 12th, 2016 - 05:53 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Absolutely. Macri and his crew keep repeating they need to “layoff people in order to create jobs.” In Macriland, you heal people by killing them!
What's really at work here is a push to raise unemployment rates so that every single worker will be so afraid of losing their job, they will even take a pay cut, following Macri's famous quote: “we need to lower the costs and the wages are part of the costs.”
11
May 12th, 2016 - 06:57 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“What's really at work here is a push to raise unemployment rates so that every single worker will be so afraid of losing their job, they will even take a pay cut”
That doesn't make sense.....did you mean lower unemployment benefits...?
ENRIQUE MASSOT (10), Thank you, it's good to know about you again, but keep calm, we will return.
May 12th, 2016 - 08:07 pm - Link - Report abuse 011
May 12th, 2016 - 09:42 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Or did you mean raise the number of unemployed people so that every worker will be so afraid of losing their job...?
@12 and @13 ... If the actual dismissal rate for make-work jobs for nonproductive camporistas were 8 per hour, within 3 months we could eliminate nearly one third of them.
May 12th, 2016 - 09:49 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Compensation rates in Argentina are indeed out of proportion to actual productivity, and need to be adjusted. When we compare Argentina and Brazil, the former is significantly less efficient in terms of productivity yet average compensation is greatly higher in Argentina (i.e., paid more for producing less).
Higher unemployment rates mean more people are out of jobs.
May 13th, 2016 - 01:03 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Macri says lay offs will eventually lead to massive creation of new jobs, which of course is an attempt to force the population to passively accept a massive change in national income distribution benefiting the wealthy and the powerful.
An economy minister of times gone also asked the Argentines for patience while negative changes were implemented. “We need to go through the winter,” Alvaro Alsogaray used to say.
Like we say in Castellano: “Nothing new under the sun.”
@16 Reekie says, “ Higher unemployment rates mean more people are out of jobs.”
May 13th, 2016 - 01:40 pm - Link - Report abuse 0This man is certainly a genius. He must indeed be argentine. I would never have guessed the relationship between unemployment and jobs.
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News item (AP wire story) : “ Argentina's Capital Reports Highest Inflation in 14 Years” (over 40 percent already)
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/argentinas-capital-reports-highest-inflation-14-years-39076760
And in jibberjabber
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/argentinas-capital-reports-highest-inflation-14-years-39076760
We see the work of other argento geniuses.
Or as they say, nothing new under the sun.
I can understand the fact that there are many people who don't agree on kirchnerism in ideological terms, and i have no problem in respecting their opinions although i don't like them, but what is really pathetic and mediocre, is to defend Macri's reactionary measures, even when it's signalized that his arguments are based on lies. Perhaps some people don't realise that if he says that the country neather grows, nor creates jobs since 4 years ago, and Jorge Todesca (the new director of indec) publishes the figures of economic grows since 2011 untill 2015, where we could see that our economy had economic grows, it means that Macri isn't telling the truth, beyond the ideological concidences that many of you have with him, you can't be so stupid t0 buy what he says.
May 13th, 2016 - 06:00 pm - Link - Report abuse 0On the other hand, something simillar happens with the statal jobs, and with the unemployment rate, the numbers of our sipa, show that jobs in private sector have always been much bigger than those created in the statal one, anyway, even if public jobs were much more than private ones, what is the problem with it?, why can't the state create a lot of jobs?. If there was an honest debate about jobs in statal entities, it would be necessary to say that in a context where the state recovered many of the enterprioces that had been sold during the 90's, it was obvious that there were going to be more public jobs.
Although some people don't accept it, Macri is implementing the hard cuts that we warned during the campaign, unfortunatelly, many people decided to believe Macri, and now we are living the consecuences.
Anyway, i can understand that it's expectable that although we refute Macri's lies with solid arguments, some people will always be happy believing that the regressive measures that he is taking, will save the nation, it's well known that it has always been a waste of time to discuss with all that tilingueria.
@18 Axel: “....defend Macri's reactionary measures, even when it's signalized that his arguments are based on lies. ”
May 13th, 2016 - 07:39 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Well then, if Macri's government is based on lies, and CKF's government was based on lies, then what other choices do you have? I mean, other than having some more competent and responsible country like Somalia run Argentina for you.
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@ 18 Axel: “ ... even if public jobs were much more than private ones, what is the problem with it?...”
Do you mean you really don't understand? Or are you just trying to be funny?
#19 marti
May 14th, 2016 - 07:53 am - Link - Report abuse 0Unconditional admirers of power and money will never understand the difference between a government working to improve things--making mistakes I the process--and a government that tries hard to turn back the clock on social progress.
#20 Unconditional admirers of marxism and corruption will never understand the difference between a government that robbing a country blind while handing out toys and meaningless make-work jobs, deliberately allowing the infrastructure to decay while filling the vaults of its cronies - and pretending these are all accounting errors--and a government that tries hard to turn away a century of self-destructive populism and governance by punteros, murderers, and goons.
May 14th, 2016 - 02:42 pm - Link - Report abuse 0It wouldn't be extrange if many of those idiots who often say that C. F. K.'s government was absolutely corrupt, think that Macri is an example of transparence and ethic who fights against corruption. Perhaps they ignore that Macri's administration, as a chief of government from Buenos Aires City, was denounced in many opportunities, accused of serious irregular actions, or maybe they don't know that the president and some of his followers have off shore societies, that's why they appear on the panama papers, but those imbeciles just talk about the roud of k money.
May 14th, 2016 - 11:05 pm - Link - Report abuse 0On the other hand, when those cretins from the so called independent journalism make such an umbalanced treatment between the denounces of corruption cases that involve C. F. K's administration, and the PanaMacri, it's understandable why many people just refer to the roud of k money. Anyway, as i said in my former comment, it has always been a waste of time to discuss with the national and international tilingueria, but not all people are hypocrite.
@22 Axle: “...many of those idiots who often say that C. F. K.'s government was absolutely corrupt....”
May 15th, 2016 - 12:22 am - Link - Report abuse 0Poor Axel - It isn't the idiots who think of CFK and the KK as absolutely corrupt, but instead the wise, the reasonable, the experienced and the observant.
Your complaints about Macri confirm something once again that hardly needs additional confirmation. No matter who runs Argentina, the government is going to be incompetent, inept, and very likely el santísimo retrato de la corrupción. Argentines, as you know, are incapable of electing or even accepting good governance. And the coming months will let you revel in the prosecution of the last government's baggage of unambiguous criminals, while the present government falls all over itself contriving different problems and crises.
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