21 November, 2023 | Current Regulations

Dear all,

The 2024 public holidays for tourism purposes still have to be determined because the pertinent statute has not yet been enacted. Therefore, please find below the public holidays and religious celebrations applicable in 2024 in line with existing regulations. We will elaborate on this when the public holidays for tourism purposes are determined.

1. Public Holidays and Non-Working Days

Law 27,399 and its complementary regulations have reorganized the schedule of public holidays, non-working days, and religious celebrations and have further empowered the Argentine Executive Branch to set three “public holidays for tourism purposes” per year.

Such law provides that certain public holidays may be moved forward or backwards, depending on the date on which they fall.

Consequently, public holidays in 2024 will be the following:

• January 1 (New Year’s Day): it falls on a Monday and it is never moved to another day;
• Carnival Monday and Tuesday, on February 12 and 13, 2024;
• March 24 (Truth and Justice Memorial Day): it falls on a Sunday and it is never moved to another day;
• March 29 (Holy Friday): it is not moved to another day;
• April 2 (Malvinas Veterans’ and Fallen Soldiers’ Day): it falls on a Tuesday and it is never moved to another day;
• May 1 (Labor Day): it falls on a Wednesday and it is never moved to another day;
• May 25 (May’s Revolution Day): it falls on a Saturday and it is never moved to another day;
• June 17 (Martín Miguel de Güemes’ Day): it falls on a Monday and, therefore, it is not moved to another day;
• June 20 (National Flag Day): it falls on a Thursday and it is not moved to another day;
• July 9 (Independence Day): it falls on a Tuesday and it is not moved to another day;
• August 17 (José de San Martín’s Day): it falls on a Saturday and, therefore, it is not moved to another day;
• October 12 (Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity): it falls on a Saturday and, therefore, it is not moved;
• November 20 (National Sovereignty Day): it falls on a Wednesday and it is moved to November 18;
• December 8 (Feast of the Immaculate Conception): it falls on a Sunday and it is never moved to another day;
• December 25 (Christmas Day): it falls on a Wednesday and it is never moved to another day.

Under current regulations, the following days will be regarded as “non-working days”: (i) “Holy Thursday”, which is celebrated on March 28, 2024, and (ii) April 24, in commemoration of the “Day of Tolerance and Respect Among Peoples” and of the Armenian genocide (public employees and officers and students of Armenian origin are authorized to take the day off to attend and participate in activities in commemoration of the tragedy suffered by their community).

2. Pubic Holidays for Tourism Purposes

As a consequence of the enactment of Law 27,399 referred to above and for the purpose of promoting tourism in the country, whenever public holidays fall on a Tuesday or Thursday, the Argentine Executive Branch will establish three (3) public holidays or non-working days a year that will fall on a Monday or Friday.

The executive order determining the 2024 public holidays for tourism purposes has not yet been issued, so we will let you know when it is published.

III. Religious Celebrations

It should also be pointed out that Jewish and Muslim workers that do not perform tasks on the days of the following celebrations will nevertheless be entitled to their remuneration for the days in question.

– Jewish Workers

• Jewish Passover (four days), in 2024, from the appearance of the first star on April 22 until April 24;
• Jewish New Year (two days), in 2024, from the appearance of the first star on October 2 until October 3;
• Jewish Day of Atonement (one day), in 2024, from the appearance of the first star on October 11 until October 12.

– Muslim Workers

• Feast of the Sacrifice (even though this date must be confirmed, depending on the lunar calendar, it will presumably fall in mid March 2024);
• Islamic New Year (even though this date must be confirmed, depending on the lunar calendar, it will presumably fall in late June 2024) and,

• The day after the end of the fast (even though this date must be confirmed, depending on the lunar calendar, it will presumably fall in mid August 2024).

For any clarification or further questions regarding this matter, please contact Javier Fernández Verstegen (jverstegen@brons.com.ar).

5 October, 2023 | Current Regulations

Resolution 15/2023, issued by the National Board of Employment, Productivity, and Basic Minimum Wage (Consejo Nacional del Empleo, la Productividad y el Salario Mínimo Vital y Móvil), was published today in the Official Gazette, raising the basic minimum wage effective October 1, 2023, with a staggered implementation.

The resolution establishes that the basic minimum wage increase applies to employees governed by the Employment Contract Law (Ley de Contrato de Trabajo) and to public-sector employees, as well as to workers governed by the Agricultural Workers’ Regime. Domestic workers are excluded.

The new basic minimum wage will apply as follows:

It should be borne in mind that the basic minimum wage is the lowest hourly or monthly remuneration that any worker must collect for a full workday.

The increase applied has the following essential effects:

• Employer’s obligation to modify the total gross monthly or hourly wages collected by employees if such wages are lower than the basic minimum wage.
• Need for updating the wage scales established under the collective bargaining agreements in compliance with the new basic minimum wage and, when it is so provided under the collective bargaining agreement, keeping the percentage differences between categories, according to the specific provision of the agreement in question.
• Modification of the parameters to calculate attachments on workers’ remunerations (Executive Order 484/87).
• Establishment of the value to be considered for the purposes of the income tax under Executive Order 473/2023 at ARS 1,980,000 (15 times the basic minimum wage), as of October 1.

If you have any question or need any clarification on this issue, feel free to contact Javier Fernández Verstegen (jverstegen@brons.com.ar).

4 September, 2023 | Current Regulations

After various announcements, in the Official Gazette of today, August 31, 2023, Executive Order 438/2023 (the EO) was published, establishing the guidelines to pay a bonus not subject to social security contributions (the Bonus) to public- and private-sector employees and to domestic workers.

This article is intended to merely inform about the scope of the EO for private-sector employees and domestic workers.

Below is a summary of the EO main aspects. We are available to provide any additional clarification and information.

a. Eligibility. Any worker hired under any modality that works under an employment relationship and whose net salary as of August 2023 -including amounts subject and not subject to social security contributions- is lower than ARS 400,000 (four hundred thousand Argentine pesos) (the Net Remuneration).

b. Bonus Amount. The maximum amount of the Bonus will be ARS 60,000 (sixty thousand Argentine pesos), payable in two equal installments of up to ARS 30,000 (thirty thousand Argentine pesos) each.

c. Nature of the Bonus. The Bonus is not subject to social security contributions, so it cannot be used to calculate them or to calculate premiums payable to union-managed health maintenance organizations. It must be used, though, to calculate the premiums payable to workers’ compensation insurance companies.

d. Proportional Bonus. In the case of part-time workers or employees whose workdays are shorter than provided under the law or a collective bargaining agreement, the Net Remuneration and the Bonus will be proportional to such workdays.

e. Ranges of the Bonus. The Bonus amount will vary depending on the following factors:

• • If the Net Remuneration is equal to or lower than ARS 370,000, the Bonus will be ARS 30,000 per installment.
  • If the Net Remuneration is higher than ARS 370,000, the Bonus will be the difference between such Net Remuneration and ARS 400,000 per installment (that is, from ARS 29,999.99 to ARS 0.01).

f. Payment Timeframes. The Bonus must be paid with the August and September 2023 remunerations. For August, an additional 15-business-day period is granted for the payment, so the due date will be September 21.

g. Setoff. The EO establishes the possibility of offsetting the Bonus against any salary raises agreed upon in the collective bargaining mechanism. This means that, in relation to any employees not covered by a collective bargaining agreement or that received discretionary raises from their employers, the Bonus cannot be offset against any salary raises.

h. Tax Benefit. Micro and small- and medium-sized companies that have a MiPyMe certificate may offset this Bonus against their contributions to social security as employers, as per the following guidelines.

Micro-companies may offset 100% up to the maximum social security contributions (exclusive of any payments to union-managed health maintenance organizations) paid in each month.

Small-sized companies may offset 50% up to the maximum social security contributions (exclusive of any payments to union-managed health maintenance organizations) paid in each month.

i. Domestic Workers. The Bonus will be ARS 25,000 (twenty-five thousand Argentine pesos), payable in 2 installments of up to ARS 12,500 (twelve thousand, five hundred Argentine pesos) each. The maximum amount will be payable to any domestic worker collecting a Net Remuneration as of August 2023 equal to or lower than ARS 387,500. In the case of any Net Remuneration higher than ARS 387,500 as of August 2023, the Bonus amount will be the difference between ARS 400,000 and the Net Remuneration. Domestic workers’ employers that (i) were not subject to the Personal Assets Tax in 2022, (ii) have received net income lower than ARS 1,500,000, and (iii) have paid the Bonus may request a refund equivalent to 50% of the Bonus paid.

j. Other Limitations. Despite contradictory information provided, the EO does not preclude Bonus recipients from accessing the foreign exchange market, although the possibility that such restriction might be imposed under another regulation should not be ruled out.

For any clarification or further questions regarding this matter, please contact Javier Fernández Verstegen (jverstegen@brons.com.ar).

19 March, 2021 | Current Regulations

Resolution 142/2021 of the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Social Security, published on March 19, 2021, provides some clarifications with regard to the effective date of the telework contract modality established by Law 27,555.

In this regard, this Resolution states that while (i) the restrictions and/or health recommendations established by the national, provincial or local authorities, or (ii) the preventive measures taken by the employers to minimize the risks of transmission continue in effect, the fact that the employees may continue working remotely does not imply that such employees have expressed their voluntarily acceptance as required for the applicability of the telework modality and, therefore, the terms and conditions set forth in Law 27555 and its Regulatory Executive Order 37/21 are not enforceable.

The provisions of the Resolution are related to the suggestions already made in the sense that, due to the legal waivers, restrictions on the use of spaces and public transportation, etc., the existence of an essential condition of the employment relationship could not be validly held.

Regardless of the way in which the Resolution has been drafted, it does not clearly and accurately specify when the Telework Law will become effective or if other regulations will be issued in the future to inform the cessation of the objective circumstances that prevent the applicability of such law, given that the Resolution only states that this deferment will continue while the restrictions remain in effect. We will keep you posted about this.

Now then, despite the provisions of this Resolution, we wish to clarify that there is no impediment for a company to put in place the telework terms and conditions but, in such case, it will have to comply with the obligations contained in the relevant law, in particular those referring to the execution of an employment contract specifying the employee’s work schedule and other conditions / benefits, and the worker’s consent thereto.

Although the Resolution constitutes public information, we still recommend that the employees be informed about it in order to avoid any detrimental situation in the future.

If you need additional clarifications, please contact Javier Fernandez Verstegen (jverstegen@brons.com.ar).