Faced with the robbery that workers face with payroll loans, on March 17, 2022, the Chamber of Deputies approved an opinion -on a senatorial initiative- that establishes “delegated collection”. do we advance?
The minutes that amend and add to the General Law on Securities and Credit Operations, the General Law on Auxiliary Credit Organizations and Activities, as well as the Law on Protection and Defense of Financial Services Users, show profound disagreements on its content among legislators.
It establishes an agreement that will allow employers to directly deliver payments on the payroll credit to the worker’s creditors, without the worker’s intervention.
The opinion contemplates the following exclusions: that the credit contracts specify the maximum interest rate and the cap on commissions; that do not include pensions, bonuses and benefits as a guarantee of payment, as well as that a salary discount limit be established: 45 percent of its amount.
Payroll loans constitute a market universe that adds up to about 4.6 million loans, with a portfolio that reaches 252 thousand 900 million pesos. In this market, the Multiple Purpose Financial Institutions (Sofomes) intervene in a prominent way, which have been repeatedly denounced for charging excessive interest: up to 70 percent of the worker’s salary, operating without any control, regulation and transparency. .
According to the opinion, the proposed reform aims to curb these abuses, providing transparency and legal certainty to borrowers by disseminating information on the use of these credits for the benefit of workers. However, a statement from the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit maintains that the ruling benefits financial entities “disproportionately and unequally” to the detriment of workers who, in exchange for the irrevocability of their consent, would not receive reasonable rates ( The Economist10/3/22).
That opinion does not improve access to payroll credit for workers or control the Sofomes. From the original senatorial initiative, the market for these is favored, which faces declines due to the overdue portfolio and the drop in formal employment, exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic.
In such a way that the “delegated collection” ends up favoring, in the first place, the creditors. It guarantees them the recovery of obligations, using the employers as a collection service, avoiding costs for possible litigation, as well as a high return on a captive market, whose guarantee, the workers’ salary, does not justify the high interest rates and commissions they charge.
Therefore, the “delegated collection” does not mean an improvement in the well-being of the workers nor does it allow them to access credits on reasonable terms. On the contrary, it provokes –in a context of economic pressure, meager recovery of employment and salaries pressured by the inflationary level– abuses, abuses, over-indebtedness, usury and salary confiscation.
It should be added that, in addition to the distortions to the financial system and the popular economy, the ruling opposes both principles and constitutional and legal provisions. The “delegated collection” constitutes an attachment de facto and without trial of those accredited.
The opinion also circumvents the constitutional mandates on the inalienable right to receive a sufficient salary, as well as its unattachability, plus the legal provisions that protect it and that guarantee that the payment is made directly to the worker and not to a third party, as it was in the so-called stripe stores.
So, in the face of the robbery that workers face with payroll loans, until now, the legislative work in progress still does not allow substantive progress to be seen. We hope that these will materialize very soon following a route that avoids, first, benefiting private interests – as the statement from the Ministry of Finance warns in a timely manner – and, second, always adhering to the defense of wages.
In the 4T, the legislative work must never lose sight of the fact that what must be eradicated in the background is the robbery against the workers that some union representations and a plethora of officials of the neoliberal period facilitated. It is necessary to regulate the Sofomes and, simultaneously, support the workers.
President López Obrador has already spoken out against such a reform: he clearly stated that the due analysis was not deepened (morning, 2/18/22). Now the Senate of the Republic has the floor!
* Autonomous Metropolitan University-Xochimilco
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