President Andrés Manuel López Obrador opened a new front and this Tuesday announced that he would send a bill to Congress to eliminate outsourcing and announced that it will be as controversial a topic as trusts.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has denounced the practice of hiring personnel through third parties, but in his government several agencies, including the SEP or the Banco del Bienestar, award millionaire contracts for social programs
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador criticized outsourcing companies yesterday, which he described as “coyotes” and influence peddlers, but his government has assigned contracts for at least 5 billion pesos to a dozen companies dedicated to that scheme outsourcing.
In fact, the Banco del Bienestar, one of the flagship projects of the López Obrador government, is the federal agency that has spent the most money hiring outsourcing companies.
In 2019 the Banco del Bienestar paid 408 million pesos to four companies of this type and so far in 2020 the amount has risen to 463 million.
In the contracts reviewed by Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (MCCI), the federal government defended the outsourcing scheme, in contradiction to the public position that the President assumed yesterday in his morning press conference.
“The need to carry out the contracting of technical and administrative services by outsourcing is considered fully justified, since by not having said services, the negative impact on the social, economic and financial aspects would be very high, coupled with the fact that it could bring as a consequence, the lack of credibility in the current government, since one of its main guiding principles is the delivery of resources from social programs ”, is mentioned in an annex to the contract assigned by the Banco de Bienestar to the company KOM Business SA de CV .
In contrast, López Obrador spoke out yesterday for analyzing the possible disappearance of the outsourcing or subcontracting scheme because it eludes the payment of benefits to workers.
“It is assumed that, in strict adherence to the labor law, whoever hires a worker has to comply with certain obligations: the payment of a fair salary, registration in Social Security, that sometimes is not done by these companies intermediaries or they state that workers earn less so as not to pay the social security contributions (…) These offices that operate these payrolls earn a lot of money, these groups of intermediaries, coyotes, were created ”.
Therefore, he said that they will find a way to modify that scheme so that there are no longer abuses.
In all areas
MCCI located more than 50 contracts that between 2019 and 2020 the federal government has assigned to outsourcing companies, for an amount close to 5 billion pesos.
The contracts have been given in practically all areas of the federal government: in the ministries of Welfare, Economy, Foreign Relations, the Navy, Sedena, Culture and Education, as well as in Bancomext, Nacional Financiera, Banobras, the INEA and in centers research.
In 2019, contracts exceeded 3 billion pesos, although most had coverage for more than a year. Until the beginning of October 2020, almost 2 billion pesos more had been added in allocations to outsourcing companies.
After the Banco de Bienestar, the second federal agency that most resorts to outsourcing is the Ministry of Finance, which only in a contract valid from August 2019 to December 2020 will pay 670 million pesos for the subcontracting of almost a thousand employees throughout the country serving agricultural financing.
Online education services and scholarship administration were also delegated to outsourcing companies.
On September 2, 2020, the Ministry of Public Education assigned a contract for 268 million pesos to the Corporate Executive MZT to carry out the personnel administration and payroll to the personnel who offer their services in the so-called “Prepa online ”.
In 2019, that contract had been assigned to the company Vision and Business Strategy, for an amount of 159 million pesos.
In addition, a part of the administrative staff that manages the SEP scholarship program has been in charge of a consortium made up of four outsourcing companies since last year.
On social media, a group of workers from the SEP’s online preparatory system has protested this outsourcing practice.
“After more than eight months without payment, the facilitators and tutors of the online preparatory SEP, once again suffer from the lack of commitment on the part of the educational authorities. This by hiring the corporate outsourcing company MZT Executive for the dispersion of payments, “they stated in a letter released at the beginning of October.
“The payments were not made in a single issue, but are being made partially, even though federal labor law has been violated from the beginning.”
The employees accused the outsourcing company of giving them a despotic treatment and failing to perform their benefits.
They subcontract to 28 thousand
Only in 8 of the largest assignments to outsourcing companies, the federal government subcontracted for this year 28,800 employees who offer their services for social programs of the Ministry of Education, Segalmex (formerly Diconsa), Banco del Bienestar, rural financing , housing and culture.
The largest subcontracting was through the company MZT Corporativo Executive SA de CV, which in September 2020 obtained an allocation of up to 310 million pesos to employ a maximum of 21,107 learning agents from the Prepa en Línea program.
Of that total, 18 thousand 508 positions were for virtual advisors of the students, 3 thousand 136 for tutors and the rest for specialists who develop the platform and enrich the contents of the distance education program.
Seguridad Alimentaria Mexicana, a dependency that groups Liconsa and Diconsa, has 3,600 employees under subcontract, while the Ministry of Culture assigned 1,600 of its workers to outsourcing companies, most of the Creative Seedlings and Missions for Diversity programs cultural, focused on serving rural communities throughout the country.
The National Financial for Agricultural, Rural, Forestry and Fisheries Development, dependent on the Ministry of Finance, also resorted to the outsourcing model and has a current contract for 670 million pesos with the company WeKeep on Moving, which is in charge of the payroll of 928 employees promoting federal government credit programs.
This contract includes payments to managers of the rural finance company, with salaries of up to 106 thousand pesos per month.
The same company WeKeep Moving obtained two contracts to recruit 351 employees who promote the programs of the National Housing Commission.
Government employees, recruited under the outsourcing regime, are not guaranteed employment beyond the term of the agreement with the outsourcing company. They are, in a way, temporary employees. For example, culture workers were hired for only eight months.
AMLO maintained that the reforms they made (to allow outsourcing) were based on the fact that in this way the company was helped so that it would not engage in administrative procedures, so that it could have a contract with a company that would administer the payments to the workers, the payment to social security, to Infonavit. What happened? That they abused, ”he remarked.
And what will happen to the 3.5 million workers hired by outsourcing?
Mauricio Reynoso, president of the Mexican Association of Companies in Human Resources (Amedirh), said at the end of 2019 that the Federal Labor Law already provides measures to prevent bad subcontracting practices, through article 15-A.
According to the 2019 Inegi Economic Censuses, 17 percent of the employed population in the country is hired under the outsourcing regime, this means that some 3 and a half million jobs are at risk.
Source: cydnoticias.mx, contralacorrupcion.mx
