Five key aspects are included in the draft labor law which has just entered the treatment of the Commission for the right to work and social security. This week began the phase of socialization and receiving comments to this regulatory body, which brings together four initiatives of different actors in the field of work.

José Loayza, subject matter expert at Census Consultores and which analyzed the proposal, highlighted the most interesting aspects of the law, which seeks to eliminate discrimination in employment based on age and encourage the employment of young people; in addition to regulating temporary contracts and rewarding internships.

So, among the main points are:

In the first phase of socialization, The commission invited representatives of the Ministry of Labor, the Unitary Front of Workers, the Technical Secretariat of the National Council for Intergenerational Equality and the Confederation of Public Servants of Ecuador, Conasep.

For Loaiza, “one of the key measures of the law is to protect employees with more than 20 years of service or those who are over 50 from being fired based on their age alone.” He also assured that this provision aims to balance the employment of young workers without jeopardizing the continuity of employment of those approaching retirement.

For an expert inIn the field of work, in the event that the Assembly approves the project as it is at the moment, “employers must consider the new recruitment budgets, as well as the appropriate values ​​for the payment of seniority, age and gender in the selection of your staff, with a focus on young people, and taking into account the experience that staff over 40 can contribute”.

About the topic, Jaime Carrera, executive secretary of the Observatory for Fiscal Policy (OPF), said the project creates more restrictions for companies and makes the country’s work model more inflexible. In this sense, what this law would ultimately generate is that investments are scared away, and thus there is no major generation of employment. He explained that members of the assembly should create more flexible labor standards that attract investment. As an example, he cited Portugal, which went from being one of the most complex economies in Europe to a very strong and growing one. He explained that they made a flexible work reform that gave them good results. Among the measures adopted by Portugal are hourly work, investment incentives and the freedom of people to work.

Meanwhile, this week, during socializing, Edwin Bedoya, from the Unitary Front of Workers and vice president of the Ecuadorian Confederation of Class Organizations (Cedocut), He suggested that the proposal be considered in the treatment of the Comprehensive Labor Law, so that there would be no legal loopholes and in order to standardize its interpretation. He specified the unemployment figures that the country is going through and said that the law should include the right to work for young people, but should not exclude the continuity of workers with the goal of retirement.

He asserted that many workers who come to meet 20 years of service or 45 and 50 years of age are rejected, as a response to the Humanitarian Law, who later do not have access to employment, to which is added a great demand for occupational profiles, which ends in discrimination of individual workers.

According to representative Luis Almeida, the purpose of the law is to benefit adults for their experience and promote youth employment in the public and private sectors.

In the meantime, the representative Salvador Quishpe pointed out: “Unification of laws allows us to guarantee jobs for young people and adults.” We must not fall into the utilitarian and consumerist system, on the contrary, it is imperative to find a balance between youth and experience”.

According to the Institute for According to statistics and censuses, 29% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 have full-time employment, while this figure increases to 36% between the ages of 45 and 64. However, for those 65 and older, the full employment rate drops dramatically to 13%.

The four projects that merge into one are: