BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia’s authorities Tuesday printed the contents of a proposed referendum on reform of the nation’s labor legal guidelines, that seeks to provide workers larger entry to well being advantages and extra time pay. If authorized, nonetheless, it may make it tougher to create jobs in Latin America’s fourth largest financial system.
The Ministry of the Inside printed 12 questions that it plans to incorporate in a nationwide referendum, recognized in Colombia as a well-liked session. A date hasn’t been set for the referendum, which nonetheless requires approval from Colombia’s Senate.
The questions ask voters in the event that they agree or disagree with reforms to Colombia’s labor legal guidelines, together with requiring meals supply platforms to supply medical insurance for freelancers and requiring corporations to pay their workers double their every day price once they work on Sundays.
One other query asks voters if “daytime work ought to go from 6 a.m. to six p.m.” implying that workers working exterior these hours needs to be paid additional.
The federal government has beforehand proposed that corporations pay workers a 35% bonus for any time labored exterior common daytime hours.
Enterprise teams in Colombia oppose the reforms, arguing they may make it tougher for small and medium enterprises to supply correct labor contracts to their employees, whereas encouraging them to rent folks informally, paying them in money. Commerce teams have additionally argued that the federal government’s reforms do little to create new jobs.
“The federal government’s reforms don’t acknowledge the fact of 16 million casual laborers and unemployed folks in Colombia,” Jaime Alberto Cabal, the president of Colombia’s Nationwide Affiliation of Retailers mentioned in a video printed on X.
The referendum may also ask voters if a particular fund needs to be created to supply pensions to rural employees, and if corporations needs to be obliged to rent “at the very least two folks with disabilities for each 100 employees.”
In a speech on Monday, President Gustavo Petro mentioned he’ll lead a march to Colombia’s Congress on Might 1 to stress legislators into giving the referendum a inexperienced gentle.
“It’s time for the folks to make their very own selections” Petro mentioned Monday in a nationally televised speech, the place he argued that Colombia’s Congress has been attempting to “deny the folks” the proper to resolve their future.
The federal government’s push for a referendum comes as Colombia’s president fails to get the nation’s Senate to go laws on labor legal guidelines and well being care, that are central to his financial agenda.
Petro is now attempting to get round this deadlock by getting a few of his reforms handed by means of a referendum, a transfer that no Colombian authorities has tried earlier than.
Political analysts say it will likely be robust for the president to get sufficient voters to help his proposals, even when they sound enticing for employees looking for extra rights.
Beneath Colombian regulation, at the very least one third of the nation’s eligible voters should take part in in style consultations for his or her outcomes to hold any authorized weight. Which means the proposed referendum would wish roughly 13 million votes for its outcomes to be applied.
Petro received the 2022 presidential election with 11 million votes.
“There is perhaps institutional actors, similar to labor unions, who’re very on this referendum” mentioned Yan Basset a political analyst at Bogota’s Rosario College. “However their capability to mobilize voters is proscribed.”
Basset mentioned the referendum offers Petro a cause to mobilize his occasion’s bases, forward of subsequent 12 months’s presidential election, giving the president’s occasion considerably of an electoral benefit.
But when the referendum doesn’t go, it may additionally harm the president, Basset mentioned, as a result of “the concept that he’s representing the pursuits of the folks” would lose credibility.
