To measure the importance of labor liabilities, it represents around one third of the liability of short and long terms of the company that closed the last quarter at 4.1 billion pesos.
Already in previous years, before the start of the current six-year term, labor liabilities had significantly reduced, after the oil company reached an agreement with its union to reduce the retirement age of its employees with less than 15 years of service, the entry of a mechanism for new workers to fund their pensions through individual accounts and some transfers of the Ministry of Finance.
In 2018, the last quarter of the last administration, labor liabilities closed at one trillion 80,000 million pesos, after a progressive reduction after the approval of the 2013 reform. But the increase began again in 2019, in just one year Pemex added 376,000 million labor liabilities, equivalent to 35%, the highest jump to date.
In total, so far this administration has increased by 29% and its peak was reached in 2020, when the figure was one trillion 535,000 million pesos.
The increase occurs in the middle of claims of the main union of the oil company, which alleges breach of their collective agreement. the state has already reduced benefits to some of its employees, especially those at high levels, but this has not been enough.
The federal administration has made debt reduction one of its main objectives. The company’s total liabilities were slightly reduced, by 3%, at the end of the first quarter and closed at 108,000 million dollars, but the reduction of labor liabilities is still one of the great pending issues of the administration that has put in the center of energy policy to company personnel.
Some state oil companies, such as the Colombian Ecopetrol and Brazil’s Petrobras, have reduced their workforce to clean up their finances. “The business hasn’t held up well in terms of efficiency, it’s a ‘bloated’ company (in terms of staff), which is 100% government owned and not run like a private, cost-efficient company,” says Aaron Gifford , emerging markets analyst at HSBC bank.
The second company has minimized its number of collaborators and from 2013 – when it was the most indebted oil company in the world – to date it has reduced this figure by 40,000 employees, around 50% of the total it had before, according to figures from Statista consultancy.