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The president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, denied Tuesday that there is a wave of layoffs on the way.
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During a press conference, he attacked an anti-layoff bill passed by the Senate being debated in the lower house. Macri said he will veto the proposal if Congress approves it because he is "certain" that it is "bad for Argentines."
The bill seeks to ban dismissals in both the public and private sectors until Dec. 2017 and it would be retroactive from March 1, 2016, so all workers who have been fired since that date would be reinstated.
The head of state made no reference to the protests of thousands of Argentines against his government and said that dismissals in the country only come about if the people are not fulfilling their functions.
Macri said, "There is no problem of a wave of mass layoffs ... We need to create quality jobs and that is created by an investment process."
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During the press conference he asked the leader of the Renewal Front to support his policies by rejecting the anti-layoffs bill in the lower house.
"I ask Sergio Massa and the majority of the deputies to reject this Kirchnerism project," he said.
In the first four months of the Macri administration, there were about 140,000 workers laid off and the poor in the country increased by 5.5 percent, representing 1.4 million new poor in the South American nation.
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