Saturday January 28, 2023 | 6:38 p.m.
Jobs in the IT sector grew by 44.5% from 2017 to 2022, according to data published by the IT Work Observatory of the Computer Trade Association (AGC).
This entity presented this week the Computer Work Observatory (OTI) at the Kirchner Cultural Center (CCK), through which they released a detailed report on the productive sector of Software and Computer Services (SSI).
The first union observatory on computer work intends to “make one more contribution from the point of view of the workers”, highlighted its director, Esteban Sargiotto, who drew up an analysis of the laws that regulate and promote the activity such as the Software Promotion Law ( LPS) and the Knowledge Economy Law (LEC).
According to the data published in the 2022 Annual Report “An X-ray of the Software and Computer Services (SSI) sector from the perspective of workers”, reflected by Télam, the Argentine computer industry employs, by 2022, more than 142,826 workers mostly in a dependency relationship, and this meant a growth of 44.5% from January 2017 to December 2022.
However, they stressed that despite being a sector that is growing steadily in terms of employment and receives all kinds of aid, it also pays poor wages.
You can see more about the @observatory_TI and download the full report here 💇
https://t.co/Slo7YRACLS pic.twitter.com/AvQZg0G1TT
— AGC – Computer Workers (@AGCArgentina) January 26, 2023
“We find ourselves with a certain mythology that exists about the computer industry, a certain idea that one enters a course of two or three weeks or three months, and that one enters and earns 500,000 or 800,000 pesos. It is a very confusing thing. And we said, what is happening? We already knew that this was not the case, because we are a union and we are aware of the situation of the workers,” Sargiotto said during the presentation of the report.
In this framework, they argue that the variation in IT salaries in Argentina reflects a sustained drop over the years and, for the period 1998-2014, a loss of 20% was recorded. Meanwhile, for the 2017-2022 period, this historical trend of progressive loss of purchasing power continues.
“This imbalance is emphasized by the current scenario of an IT industry in full growth, whose billing levels and tax incentives do not result in better salary conditions for its workers,” they stated in the report.
On the other hand, the Observatory highlighted that the Promotion Regime established by the Knowledge Economy Law reached 628 companies, “most of them large, very large and some medium-sized ones”.
Based on requests for reports from the Executive Branch, Sargiotto indicated that the report highlights “the amount of subsidies that (companies) received, which only the Knowledge Economy Law, in two years, was 42 billion pesos “.
“This highlights the extremely important role that the Argentine State has played, always so bastardized and that it is always pointed out as an agent of underdevelopment, as in this case it did not have the opposite. As the Argentine State has been an extremely investor in this “Said Sargiotto, in dialogue with Télam.
