Care Work in the Democracy Agenda: A View from the Argentine Labor Contract Law Perspective

In our country, care work as a right has been a benefit traditionally associated to formal, salaried labor. Work legislation, and more specifically the Labor Contract Law, were regulations based on the traditional family model and on the mother figure as being the main caregiver. The "care work crisis" and the Covid-19 pandemic led to a gradual process of acknowledgement of care work as a public issue. Therefore, in this research paper we analyze the process of regulation and implementation of article 179 of the LCL which establishes care work spaces provided by companies, which coincides with the commemoration of Argentine's 40 years of uninterrupted democracy and ends an omission in government regulation of almost 50 years.