Justice will decide: Private school employee contributions pit national and Buenos Aires governments against each other

A legal battle is brewing between Argentina's national government and the Buenos Aires provincial government, escalating to the provincial Supreme Court over pension contributions for private school employees. The dispute ignited after the Buenos Aires legislature passed a law aiming to transfer the payment of contributions for non-teaching staff and extra-curricular teachers from the national Integrated Pension System (SIPA) to the Provincial Social Security Institute (IPS).

The national government has filed a lawsuit and an injunction against the Province, arguing that the provincial law is unconstitutional. They contend that a provincial regulation cannot supersede national law and that the shift would impose higher labor costs on schools while increasing the contribution proportion for workers. The national government fears this could lead to national pension system debts, as the change might be interpreted as an absence of mandatory contributions.

The controversy stems from Article 59 of the Buenos Aires Province Budget Law for 2026. This article stipulates that extra-curricular teachers, those who conduct activities outside the mandatory curriculum, and non-teaching personnel in private educational institutions should contribute to the IPS instead of SIPA. The national government's legal filing specifically requests a preliminary injunction to suspend the law's application until a final judgment is reached.

In its claim, the national government stated, "The national State promotes the present declaratory action of unconstitutionality against the Province that approved Article 59 of Provincial Law No. 15.557 and requests, urgently, a precautionary measure that suspends its application until the final sentence is issued." The filing further elaborates that the contested norm "attempts to disaffiliate from SIPA and incorporate into IPS workers whose employment relationship is governed by Law No. 20.744 on Labor Contracts, that is, by private labor law." The national government asserts that Article 59 "is therefore manifestly unconstitutional, as it exceeds provincial powers in social security matters and invades competencies of the national State exercised constitutionally through the issuance of norms (Law No. 24.241 and its complementary and regulatory norms) applied by the National Executive Power and its decentralized entities."