A definitive stance has been taken by the Mexican government on the controversial topic of job outsourcing or subcontracting (subcontratación), which has been agitating the country’s labour sphere for many years (see article n°11662). On Thursday 12 November, president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Mexican employment minister Luisa Alcalde presented a proposed reform that would ban the practice, which has been criticised for facilitating tax evasion and the underpayment of social security contributions, as well as weakening social rights. The text, which would ban subcontracting employees except in the case of specific services, was immediately passed on to the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress.
4.6 million employees outsourced. “This mechanism was originally created to facilitate firms’ administrative procedures,” the head of state told members of the press, adding that the initial objective has been “hijacked”, leading to the spread of “tax evasion” and companies avoiding their “contractual obligations to employees”. The phenomenon was also held culpable during the economic crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. “We realised that with the pandemic, thousands of workers in the same
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