Although the labor market in Colombia has been resilient and despite factors such as deceleration and fear among investors, it continues to generate new jobs, the debate today focuses on informality levels, Since eight out of 10 positions that were created in the last month are part of this sector.
In dialogue with Portfolio, the Minister of Labor, Antonio Sanguino, acknowledged that this problem is a challenge for the national government and that they are leading all efforts to mitigate it and ensure that Colombians have access to working conditions within the provisions of the law, to improve their quality of life.
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How is the fight against informality going?
Well, notice that laws, labor reforms – that of 2002 and that of 2000, I think – failed to solve the problem of informality. The flexibility of the labor market has not significantly reduced, in a significant way, informality. This is still in the order of 56%.
Arguing that the flexibility of the labor market reduces informality is demonstrably inaccurate. Rather, what we have done is reduce the purchasing capacity of workers, precarize employment, and that has an effect on the economy.
Armando Benedetti (mininterior) and Antonio Sanguino (Mentrabajo) in the launch of the ‘digital consultation’.
Because?
Because it is demonstrated that a lower purchasing capacity of workers generates less aggregate demand and, therefore, a lower demand for goods and services. That has a contraction effect on the economy production apparatus.
And this was discovered since the crisis of 1929-1930, the Great Depression. We left this depression in the world precisely due to employment policies that improved the conditions of entry of workers at that time.
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What is needed to reduce it?
To reduce informality, what are needed are macroeconomic policies that consolidate and strengthen the productive apparatus, so that this device can generate not precarious jobs, but good jobs and, each time, better jobs. And, of course, a clear demand for companies not to evade their responsibilities for business formalization and employment formalization.
We have been generating different initiatives from the National Government. One of them is the Jobs for Life program, which is an incentive program for those companies that link especially vulnerable people, those who face more obstacles, blockages and barriers to access the formal labor market: women, young people, people with disability.
Employers receive between 20% and 35% of a legal minimum wage as an incentive to link these people. We have delivered, so far this year, about one million incentives to the productive apparatus, to the companies that have requested it.
Informality
What else have they done?
We have employment formalization pacts. We have made pacts with private companies and we are also carrying out a process of formalization of public employees. Because labor instability, which devastated the indefinite term contract as a general rule and replaced it with the contract for the provision of services, also affects the public sector, the health sector already key sectors of the country’s public institutions, especially those that guarantee fundamental rights.
The development plan raises us as a goal to create 100,000 formal jobs in state institutions. And we have been advancing: we have formalized about 30,000 public servants who were in a condition of instability or hired through temporary companies or with labor intermediation formulas, to turn them into formal workers.
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Do they have a goal for informality?
To reduce informality, we are making a great effort to take it to levels below 50%, and that could also be made viable if we welcomed the proposal they gave us from the Comptroller, in relation to advancing in a national agreement.
How is the popular consultation?
We have been receiving, both on the page of the Ministry of Interior and in those of the Ministry of Labor and the Presidency of the Republic, thousands of proposals sent by young people, citizens. These are questions, suggestions of topics and initiatives that, once the process of collection and reception ends, we will proceed to organize and analyze.
This will be done within the framework of the review and consolidation of the questions that we will present to the President of the Republic, and that will subsequently be based as an annex to the request for consultation before the Plenary of the Senate.
Colombian pesos
Do you already have concrete issues to consult?
We have been working on several proposals for questions. The President of the Republic has already announced a first, related to the working day until six in the afternoon. However, we do not want to anticipate or announce other issues before receiving and review the citizen proposals.
Our intention is to leave the stage completely open, so that it is the citizens themselves who indicate the issues they want to see consulted and on which they want to pronounce.
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Are they going to include health reform?
Until now, the president has been clear in pointing out that it is not any matter, nor a minor issue. It will focus exclusively on the issues that constitute the soul and the backbone of the labor reform.
Would you cross the 2026 elections?
Not at all. Those are ghosts built from the inclement opposition that the government is permanently faced, especially from the political right. But for you to have clarity about the times, we reiterate them: in the second half of April the request for consultation before the Senate will be submitted.
The Senate has a month to pronounce. If it does not, or once it is pronounced, the president can summon the representatives and the citizens. This whole process is projected to develop until August or, at most, September of this year.
Is there money to do it?
The Registry has this year a consultation of the matches that would be held in October. That is, there are already planned resources to carry out a consultation. Now, the dictatorship is cheaper – spoiled cheap – because you don’t have to choose anyone or vote.
Democracy, on the other hand, has its merits and, of course, also a cost. But Democrats must understand that these costs are necessary to guarantee active citizenship and a society in which citizens participate in decisions that affect their lives.
