A law with fewer and fewer subjects to regulate

Within the enormous range of issues to improve in the world of work, today we have several earrings. Describing them in order of importance, we can make the following list: the incorporation of the entire economically active population into formality; inclusive legislation for trusted and unionized workers; the improvement in the labor rights of workers at the service of the state, who are most of the time defenseless, and justice with trained personnel that grant confidence, effectiveness, efficiency and speed.

If we covered the above points, our place in the World Justice Project’s measurement would not be below Liberia, Angola and Mali in position 115 out of 140 countries in the world. Rule of Law Index. But let’s forget about that world ranking. Perception meets reality: there is no real justice for Mexican workers and employers. What have we done wrong in labor matters, even considering that we recently updated our legislation?

Let’s start to tell what happens. The Federal Labor Law (LFT) only applies to very few working people. According to the latest employment and employment figures, in Mexico we have more than 128 million inhabitants, of which, 59.4 million people they are economically active population (formal and informal).

Meanwhile, the informality rate in Mexico, according to Inegi figures, is equivalent to 55.6% of employed persons over 15 years of age, that is, 31.9 million people they work informally –they are not protected by the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare and cannot access justice through the application of the LFT–. The rest, 25.5 million employed people, are formal.

An interesting or worrying fact is that the school average in Mexico is 9.7 years. Depending on the school starting point, we can consider that the schooling of most of these economically active people only reaches secondary truncated or terminated. Which implies that, in the future ten years, they may belong to the new class that Yuval Noah Harari in his book 21 lessons for the 21st century describes as a useless class, not as a sarcasm or something derogatory, but describing the fact that there will be no jobs for them, for which they will not be able to have the bare minimum to survive.

Summarizing, of the universe of 59.4 million economically active population, it seems that only 25.5 million people The LFT and all its benefits apply to them, such as; social security, increase in the minimum wage, protection against child labor, abuse of any kind and benefits such as vacations and bonuses.

But there is a great exception within the formality, that of the trusted workerswhose limitation of rights is so pronounced that the most important value, job stability, is non-existent, and this is only understood in relations with sole or physical employers, when an employment relationship cannot be maintained because it has been affected by a matter of a personal nature, but in jobs with companies that have many employees, it should not apply.

We can explain the above as follows. Within the LFT there is a series of articles that indicate that a worker is that natural person who lends to another, natural or moral, a subordinate personal work. It concludes by indicating that work will be any human, intellectual or material activity, regardless of the degree of technical preparation required by each profession or trade.

But another article makes the exception, because it divides the workers, without any clarity, from others whom it calls “trustworthy.” We had already commented that in principle a worker is a subordinate person, but it turns out that if management, inspection, surveillance and supervision functions are carried out, when they are of a general nature, as well as those related to the personal work of the employer, within the company or establishment, it will be considered trusted staff.

That is to say, in general, having better preparation and salary represents a detriment to labor rights, since it is unquestionable that the positions developed by leadership and that receive higher salaries have such profiles. Consequently, this type of personnel is outside the law and does not have job stability. In short, we must subtract the trusted workers from those 25.5 million people who work formally.

But also, seeing what the trade union movement has thinned out around the world and that automation through artificial intelligence, Big Data and the machine learning –elements that make up the systems for creating algorithms to make everything from an app to a robot work– are advancing with relentless dynamism, we can be certain that the majority of Mexican workers by the end of 2030 will no longer be ordinary blue-collar workers and unionized peasants protected by the LFT, but rather those who have a higher educational capacity, who can access jobs adapted to automation and with specialized knowledge, that is, under the definition of article 9 of the LFT, for which the majority they will be trusted staffwho will be left out of a law that supposedly protects the rights of labor stability.

It is so advanced Impact Of Automation, that even the ILO has tried to generate national policies to revolutionize learning and be able to manage this framework that includes machines that think and execute tasks, that create tangible and intangible merchandise that will be placed on the market. Is about software intelligent Robotics, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence that with their progress will destroy existing jobs and generate others with higher qualifications. Government and companies already use them.

Given this scenario of technological progress, it is estimated that there will be fewer and fewer unionized employees with technical capacity and that most of the productive movement will be through trusted staff. So we have to make a better law to protect them or formal employment will have no future.