jared laurels
Newspaper La Jornada
Friday, November 11, 2022, p. twenty-one
Doubling the number of vacation days will force companies to rethink their annual budgets due to the impact on production costs to meet this benefit, labor specialists warned.
Héctor Márquez, president of the Mexican Association of Human Capital Companies (Amech), pointed out that the operations and the resources necessary to carry them out in 2023 have already been projected by the companies, which regularly prepare their budgets from September and October of each year.
For this reason, he explained, the financial and human resources areas must evaluate the economic implications of the reform of the Federal Labor Law, which increases paid vacation days from six to 12 from the first year of work and raises them up to to 20. The initiative is pending discussion in the Chamber of Deputies and is expected to come into force next January.
The six days of rest per year currently allowed are barely a third of the 18 recommended by the International Labor Organization in Convention 132. Mexico is one of the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that has fewer vacations and where they work the longest, with an annual average of 2,137 hours.
The payment of the vacation bonus (25 percent of the salary corresponding to the days granted), the high inflation and the increase in the minimum wage will also tighten the margin of the companies, mainly the small and medium ones, which contribute 72 percent of employment in the country, he stated. It is an inopportune moment and companies are still getting more expensive, because there is generalized inflation for inputs; In addition, the increase to the minimums is coming soon
I consider.
In a separate interview, Alberto Romero, outreach coordinator at the Universidad Obrera de México, said that increasing paid vacations is a right and a benefit for workers, but companies will have a financial impact.
The companies, he explained, will have a greater absence of workers, who will have to be replaced by personnel hired by the season or another scheme. In other words, he indicated, the new employees will lack rights and job stability.
Reform it will not permeate the entire labor market
since it will exclude more than half of the employed population in Mexico, that is, about 32 million who are employed in the informal sector, he noted.
