Mexican President declares war on outsourcing: "We already tried to regulate, but certain parties don't want to cooperate"

As expected, yesterday's announcement by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of his intention to eliminate outsourcing already raised criticism and concerns in the business and corporate sectors. Nevertheless, the president remains firm and on Wednesday he is already analyzing whether to make this model disappear or just regulate it, although he is quite critical about the latter option.

During his daily morning press conference at the National Palace, the president said that attempts have been made to regulate it, "but there are those who do not help. These are the kind of decisions in which the just pay for the sinners," he said.

While he acknowledged that there are responsible businessmen, he said that there are others who are more like " coyotes ", since he considers them to be "influence peddlers" who have abused these labor outsourcing mechanisms.

Experts and stakeholders in the labor sector have reported that the disappearance of outsourcing would lead to unemployment, and with it, an increase in job informality. "Many companies carry out this activity legally. President López Obrador's threat to promote an initiative to prohibit outsourcing would imply the loss of millions of jobs," Gustavo de Hoyos, president of Coparmex (Employers Confederation of the Mexican Republic), criticized yesterday.

Nevertheless, López Obrador insists: "These groups of intermediaries, of coyotes, have been created recently. Now we are looking for a way to stop the abuses, but we don't want a reform they can circumvent it again".

At the beginning of the year, the president announced that under this figure of subcontracting, tax evasion maneuvers were detected for up to 21 billion pesos, a number that was the result of an investigation ordered by the president as part of his plan to put an end to irregularities in this area. However, today he said that the amount is greater.

Anticipating the wave of criticism that is already emerging from this analysis, he said that next Friday there will be a more extensive presentation at the morning conference on the irregularities and complaints that have been presented around this type of labor outsourcing.