Hiring in Argentina After the 2026 Labor Reform: 446 Collective Agreements Head to Renegotiation

FAL calendar checked on 23 October 2026 against Decree 1228/2026, sections 1 and 2.

On June 11, 2026, Argentina's Secretariat of Labor expanded from 150 to 446 the number of expired collective bargaining agreements (convenios colectivos) that employers and unions must renegotiate, implementing the Labor Modernization Law (Ley 27.802) through Decree 407/2026 (Infobae). For foreign companies that hire — or plan to hire — in Argentina, this is the most consequential labor development of 2026: the agreements that define working conditions in sector after sector are being reopened for the first time in decades.

The sourced, always-current entry for this measure lives on our regulatory radar.

What is "ultraactivity", and why does ending it matter?

Under Argentina's traditional regime, a collective agreement that expired never really expired — its clauses survived automatically until a new agreement replaced them. This "ultraactividad" froze working conditions negotiated decades ago (many agreements date from the 1970s–1990s) and removed any incentive to renegotiate.

The reform splits an expired agreement in two:

• Normative clauses — actual working conditions (hours, categories, tasks) — remain in force until renegotiated.
• Obligational clauses — solidarity dues and compulsory employer contributions to unions — lapse when the agreement expires.

That second point changes the bargaining table itself: the cost structure that made expired agreements comfortable for incumbents now has an expiry date, and both sides have a reason to sit down.

What exactly happens with the 446 agreements?

The 446 expired agreements — spanning industries from construction to services — enter a renegotiation procedure between employer chambers and unions covering two fronts: working conditions and solidarity dues / compulsory contributions. The Secretariat of Labor (Ministry of Human Capital) runs the procedure. The decree opens the door to renegotiating every clause that can be renegotiated within this process.

What it means for foreign employers

1. More predictable hiring costs — eventually, sector by sector

Modernized agreements mean job categories and conditions that match how work is actually done today, and an end to legacy contribution clauses an employer never negotiated. The transition is gradual: each sector renegotiates on its own timeline, so the practical picture depends on your collective agreement. Mapping which one applies to your activity is step one — it determines salary floors, categories and contributions before you make your first hire (see hiring employees in Argentina as a foreign company).

2. A window to enter while the framework modernizes

Argentina's labor law had been the most-cited deterrent for foreign employers. A framework being rewritten in favor of firm-level flexibility — together with the broader 2026 deregulation wave — shifts the calculus for setting up a local team now rather than later.

3. EOR first, entity when ready

If you want talent before navigating a renegotiating sector, an Employer of Record lets you hire compliantly while the new agreements settle, then migrate to your own entity.

Paying salaries in US dollars: the missing piece arrived

The same law carried a change that gets less attention than the collective agreements but may matter more to a foreign employer competing for talent: Ley 27.802 allows remuneration to be paid in national or foreign currency. What was missing was the banking side of it. Argentina's "cuenta sueldo" (payroll account) is a special account the central bank requires banks to keep free of charge for the employee — and until July 2026 it could only be opened in pesos. A company that wanted to pay in dollars had to do it outside that regime, through an ordinary savings account with its fees and friction.

On July 24, 2026, the BCRA closed the gap. Communication "A" 8460 added the US dollar as an admitted currency for payroll-account deposits, and extended the account's free-of-charge status to dollar accounts: no fees for opening, maintenance, transfers or withdrawals, up to the amount credited from the employment relationship — and, in the detail that matters most, un-withdrawn amounts accumulate with no time limit, so an employee can leave the dollars in the account and take them out later without losing the benefit. On cash, the central bank was explicit: banks must handle dollar deposits and withdrawals at the branch where the account is held, and — where they have the physical currency available — at other branches, ATMs and self-service terminals too. It reaches employees under the Employment Contract Law as well as pay arrangements outside that regime.

One thing not to over-read: the BCRA enabled the vehicle, it did not mandate anything. No employer is obliged to dollarize salaries, and the regulation does not decide which workers get paid in foreign currency — that remains a matter of the employment relationship. But for a tech team, a professional-services group or a nearshoring operation, the practical effect is real: a dollar salary offer no longer erodes with peso inflation, and the employee does not pay to receive it. Sourced entry: payroll accounts in US dollars (Communication "A" 8460).

Update (September 2026): three parts of the reform that matter more than the headline

Reading the official text of Ley 27.802 six months on, three provisions turn out to affect a foreign employer's day-to-day operation more directly than the count of agreements under renegotiation. All three are already law; none of them is waiting on further regulation. Section 217 states that, unless a provision says otherwise, the articles took effect on publication — that is, 6 March 2026.

1. A company-level agreement now outranks the sector one

Section 135 replaced section 18 of Law 14.250 and now provides that "collective agreements of a broader scope may not modify or dispose of the content of agreements of a narrower scope". Section 136 completes the rule in the new section 19: an agreement of narrower scope "prevails, within its personal and territorial scope of representation, over another agreement of broader scope, whether earlier or later". In plain terms: your company agreement beats the industry agreement inside its own scope, even if the industry one is signed afterwards. Section 130 adds a procedural change in the same direction — company and group-level agreements are filed for registration, publication and deposit, with formal homologation now available on request rather than required. For a multinational bringing its own working-time practices, negotiating a company-level agreement stopped being a decorative exercise.

2. The hours bank is available now, and is already being used

Section 42 rewrote section 197 bis of the Employment Contract Law: employer and employee "may voluntarily agree a scheme for compensating overtime", which may take the form of "an overtime scheme, an hours bank, compensatory days off, among other working-time arrangements" — and that scheme "may equally be agreed by the employer with the union representation at the company". The formal requirements are what make it stand up: in writing, recording that overtime is voluntary and its limits, setting out how the system works, and with a reliable control method letting both sides track hours worked and hours available. Section 43 lets agreements compute maximum working time on an average basis, subject to two floors that are not negotiable: twelve hours' rest between shifts and thirty-five hours' weekly rest. Trade press reports the first hours-bank agreements were signed during 2026 in the automotive and auto-parts sector — Mirgor with SMATA (up to 200 hours over twelve months), the UOM with FTN Motors in Campana, and a scheme for Renault's Santa Isabel plant. Those individual deals are press-attributed; we have not checked each homologated text.

3. The Teleworking Law is repealed on 1 January 2027

Section 199 repeals Law 27.555 — the teleworking statute — as of 1 January 2027, and Ley 27.802 contains no replacement: the word "teleworking" does not appear anywhere in its text. Until 31 December 2026 the current regime applies in full, including reversibility to on-site work, the duty to supply equipment and reimburse connectivity costs, the right to disconnect and the care-duties regime. After that date, remote work is governed by the Employment Contract Law, the applicable collective agreement and whatever the individual contract says. The practical consequence is not that obligations disappear but that they stop being written in a statute — which rewards employers whose contracts are properly drafted and exposes those who relied on the law filling the gaps. If you are signing or renewing remote-work contracts between now and year-end, spell out equipment, expenses, disconnection and reversibility instead of cross-referencing a law that will not exist.

There is now a companion guide covering the rest of the statute — how severance is calculated under the new section 245, which articles of the Employment Contract Law were repealed, the special statutes that expire on 1 January 2027, and the CGT litigation that suspended more than eighty articles of this law once already: Ley 27.802 in detail.

Each of these has its own sourced entry on the radar: the hours bank and working time, the repeal of the Teleworking Law and the Labour Assistance Fund starting 1 December 2026.

Status and caveats

Decree 407/2026 is in force and the renegotiation procedure is underway — but renegotiations themselves will take time, and outcomes will differ by sector. Existing normative clauses remain binding until replaced. As always on these topics: this is regulatory information, not legal advice, and the status of each measure is tracked on our radar.

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