Blockading a site now has a name and a penalty

The new section 20 ter of the Trade Union Associations Act 23.551 lists three very serious infringements, and the second is written for what happens on a site: "Causing, and/or inciting and/or organising the blockade or occupation of a workplace; preventing or obstructing, wholly or partly, the entry or exit of persons and/or goods to the workplace". The other two: "impairing the freedom to work of those who do not join industrial action through acts and/or deeds and/or intimidation or threats", and causing damage to persons or property — of the company or of third parties, inside or outside the workplace — "or unduly retaining it". ⭐ The new section 53 bis turns all of that into an "unfair practice" and adds seven more: compulsory affiliation, direct or indirect; "coercive mechanisms" — against workers and against employers, in two separate subsections; reprisals against those who do not join; refusing to bargain collectively or stalling the negotiation; and failing to comply with mandatory conciliation. ⛔ And section 55 sets the penalty, which is the part that changes the calculation: fines under the Ley 25.212 regime, raisable to five times the maximum where there are multiple practices or repeat offending, capped at 20% of what the union collects in dues in the month of the infringement, with an automatic 10% surcharge every five days of delay while non-compliance continues. The final sentence is the heaviest: if the conduct recurs, "the Justicia Nacional del Trabajo may revoke its trade-union status and/or registration". verif · Mar 6, 2026 ↗

In force with the law, from 6 March 2026. ⚠️ With a caveat worth not skipping: the definition of the infringement and its classification as an unfair practice are operative, but section 20 ter itself refers to "the penalties established by the regulation" and to the procedure the Enforcement Authority lays down. The section 55 fine, by contrast, is applied by a judge and rests on a regime that already exists (Ley 25.212). verif · Mar 6, 2026 ↗

To whoever signs a works contract with a deadline and late penalties, which is every contractor on a large project. Blocking access is not a theoretical risk in Vaca Muerta or at a high-altitude mine: it is what can stop a drilling rig, leave a loaded truck outside the field or freeze an assembly, and until now it had neither a named category nor an attached penalty. Now it has both, and it reaches partial obstruction of the entry or exit of goods, not only of people — which is the shape a logistics blockade takes. ⚠️ And there is a third party written into the text that usually falls outside these discussions: section 20 ter(c) also protects the property "of third parties", inside or outside the workplace. The haulier whose truck is held at the gate of someone else's site is named. It also reaches workers who do not join industrial action, whose freedom to work is now protected by a specific infringement and by an unfair-practice subsection of its own against reprisals. verif · Mar 6, 2026 ↗