The Colombian government is working to approve, by presidential decree, certain aspects of the labor reform that Congress definitively rejected yesterday.
Today, several media outlets in the country relayed some texts they claimed were government drafts to create a decree that would give legal validity to some of the main aspects of the reform project that did not achieve the support of the Congress. However, Minister of Labor Antonio Sanguino refuted the authenticity of these documents.
A decree to pass Colombia’s labor reform
Colombia’s Minister of Labor confirmed that the government is drafting a decree to grant legal validity to certain aspects of its labor reform proposal.
Through a video shared by the Ministry, Antonio Sanguino clarified that reports in some Colombian media today, alleging the existence of draft decrees, were false.
“We clarify that these draft decrees do not correspond to those being examined by the Legal Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, on which the President will make a final decision,” said the minister.
Sanguino pointed out that these draft decrees correspond “surely, to some ideas that sought to be regulated in the ministry in 2024.”
On the other hand, the minister clarified that “the decrees that we are going to produce in the next few days will be the result of what we have recently developed in the Ministry of Labor and that they will go through a legal examination in the Presidency and will be signed by the President.”
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Why did the labor reform collapse in Congress?
The senators who rejected the Petro government’s labor reform in Colombia alleged that the legislative initiative would not create jobs and that the application of such law would have “high costs” for employers.
They pointed out that measures such as raising overtime pay on rest days to 100% and shifting the start of the night shift to 7 p.m. instead of 9 p.m. would create an unsustainable financial burden for employers, especially small and medium-sized businesses.
On the other hand, several experts argued that the structure of the labor reform does not align with the country’s reality, where 95% of businesses are micro-enterprises.
Critics claim that the government’s initiative seemed to be more aligned with the conditions of large companies, ignoring the difficulties of small businesses. Consequently, there would be an increase in informality, according to them.
On the contrary, the government strongly defends its initiative, asserting that it does create jobs and stressing the “social justice” implied by its initiative, now rejected by the conservative majority in Congress.