December 5, 2018
The Mexican Supreme Court just ruled that IMSS payments are required for all domestic workers. In a unanimous ruling, Mexico’s Supreme Court issued an amparo, (injunction), ordering the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) to implement a pilot program in the first half of next year to ensure that domestic workers have access to the IMSS benefits they are now legally entitled to.
In this landmark ruling, our Supreme Court Justices ruled against the current~previous article of the federal Social Security Law that previously stated that paying benefits to domestic employees was voluntary. Under this latest SCJN ruling, IMSS benefits are now mandatory for all domestic workers.
Notes:
The Supreme Court’s policy does not take effect until some currently undefined time next year, when IMSS creates the new pilot program & issues rules, publishing the requisitos & reglamentos in the D.O.F (Diario Oficial de la Federación).
For people unfamiliar with employer’s payments to IMSS (roughly 2.6% of the employee’s income**), IMSS benefits for employees include … ~medical coverage, … ~maternity, disability, retirement & injury benefits, … ~life insurance, … ~daycare services for working mothers … +plus the National Workers’ Housing Fund Institute, (as government housing & credit opportunities) for acquiring property; … and the Retirement Savings System and retirement funds administrators (AFOREs), which provide retirement and pension plans to Mexican workers.
The Judges of the Supreme Court’s second chamber determined that there is no constitutionally valid reason to exclude domestic workers from the mandatory social security scheme, because the current law is discriminatory.
**2.6% based on an accounting websheet offered by accountants:
Calculadoras+ispt+imss+e+infonavit+Asalariado+2018+(UMA)
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More details on Mexican Labor Law can be found in our main article at:
https://yucalandia.com/2011/11/22/labor-law-for-household-employees-in-mexico-what-must-we-pay/
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Feel free to copy while giving proper attribution: YucaLandia/Surviving Yucatan.
© Steven M. Fry
Read-on MacDuff . . .
Surviving Yucatan 
Brilliant move! This will result, as does an artificially high minimum wage, in less people being hired and more being fired. Great work!
It’s always a good idea to look at the long-term effects of policies, not just the short-term, feel-good effects.
YIKES !!! I take good care of our domestic help, paying full aguinaldo, etc — to cleaner & gardener. (What about the one-hour visit from my weekly language tutor?) BUT, I’m not happy to get involved with the government. Filing legal paperwork in a foreign language is daunting. Consider : our housekeeper gets a flat rate each week, for a half-day visit. But our gardener gets paid by the hour, so it varies, for him. Complicated.
This becomes a computational and record-keeping nightmare. ¿ And how often would I need to report and pay ? I don’t like being a bookkeeper for the Mexican Gov’t! I was an employer up north, and hired someone to do that stuff for us, fulltime.
Yes, these workers deserve social justice, and should be able to obtain benefits for their valuable services. But part-time workers should have to keep their own records, in my view. Turning me into “an employer” is not my idea of retirement. These helpers are self-employed. Let the gov’t police its populace without hounding retirees! I will gladly pay the help the additional money for public benefits, but I want no part of reporting and remitting. Part of being self-employed is dealing with the paperwork. I know. I was my own wage slave for too many years, as a small business owner.
It will be complicated – my housekeeper work for 8 people – 3-5 hours at each place per week,
Good Point.
Fortunately, we’ve now added a link (above)to download an Excel spreadsheet that calculates the IMSS contribution for part time domestic workers.
Steve
PREDICTION : As labor mostly seems to lose, and capital wins, in my crystal ball I see contractors forming “cleaning services” which will provide the help and do the paper work, thus “buying” the burden of risk of being a scofflaw from the consumers.
ILLUSTRATION : A cleaner presently makes, say, $350mx “per weekly visit” for a half day of cleaning. The contractor will become the middle person, charging $650mx per week to the home owner, while paying the cleaner $300mx per week ; paying the gov’t $125mx per week ; and keeping $175 per week to cover the cost of filing (while paying a clerk $50mx to shuffle paper). The contractor makes as much as the gov’t, and the worker gets less, but does get increased benefits (provided the contractor really remits the filing and payment). So the worker ends up paying for the “increased benefits”, and the gov’t reduces the social carrying cost of uninsured workers, while the middleman makes money, clerical work is created, and inflation snags the consumer.