Ecuador's Workers Ask Moreno Policies to Mitigate Layoffs

The Ecuadorean Workers Confederation (CTE) Tuesday urged President Lenin Moreno to take urgent measures to mitigate the wave of layoffs that employers have unleashed by taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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"Layoffs in the public and private sectors are plentiful. Around 45,000 people are unemployed and a program of aggressive layoffs continues," the CTE activist Miguel Garcia warned.

“The Public Service Law is not being respected. It establishes stability for workers who entered the service through merit or opposition contests," he added.

For this reason, Garcia asked the government to protect those who have been laid off "without any argument" and to reinstate them in new jobs.

The CTE also expressed its disagreement with Moreno’s “Humanitarian Law”, which reduces the working day by 50 percent and establishes wages according to the hours of activity.

"This law is intended to facilitate contracts against the worker's rights. We want a decent job," CTE President Edgar Sarango said.

Since before the pandemic began, Ecuador was going through a severe economic crisis caused by the Moreno administration's neoliberal policies, which generated a loss of over 200,000 jobs in the public sector and affected the provision of health services.

During the first half of this year, around one million Ecuadoreans remained unemployed, as the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC) reported.