Relocated to Another Branch or City: What to Do If It's Abusive

A workplace relocation isn't automatically unlawful. Section 66 of the LCT lets your employer reassign you to another branch when it serves a genuine operational need. It becomes abusive when it causes you concrete material harm — higher costs or a longer commute — without a productive justification, or when it's really a disguised penalty. Since the 2026 reform, your employer must leave a formal demand unanswered before you can treat yourself as dismissed.

1. When a Workplace Relocation Is Abusive (Section 66 LCT)

Section 66 of Argentina's Employment Contracts Act (LCT) governs ius variandi: your employer's power to modify the form and manner of your work, including where you perform it. Law 27,802 (Official Gazette, March 6, 2026) replaced the article's text. Here is the text currently in force:

"The employer is authorized to introduce any changes relating to the form and manner in which work is performed, provided such changes do not alter essential terms of the employment contract and do not cause material harm to the employee. When the employer imposes measures barred by this Section, the employee — after formal demand, and only if that demand goes unanswered — may treat the contract as terminated by the employer without cause."

The prevailing legal view treats your establishment or work area as a circumstantial term of the contract — one your employer can modify — as long as three cumulative conditions are met:

Genuine operational need. The change has to answer a real organizational reason — a restructuring, a branch closing, a redistribution of staff — not a whim or a reprisal. A measure that only serves the employer's interest is, by definition, arbitrary.

Absence of material harm. This is the limit that survived explicitly in the reformed text: the transfer can't cause you a concrete financial loss. The example the legal literature points to is exactly this: a higher transport cost to reach your new workplace.

Reasonableness. The reform dropped the express reference to the exercise of this power not being "unreasonable," but reasonableness is still required: it flows from Sections 64 and 65 LCT and from the general principles of labor law, which require that management powers be exercised without arbitrariness.

The reform also dropped the reference to "moral" harm from the text. That doesn't mean a relocation that uproots you or disrupts your family life falls automatically outside the analysis: employee dignity and contractual good faith still operate as a limit, even though today your claim has to rest, above all, on material harm you can prove.

2. Transfer Within the Same City vs. to Another City or Province

The law sets no distance in kilometers past which a transfer becomes abusive. What gets weighed is the concrete impact on you, and that impact varies by case.

Within the same city or the same metropolitan area — say, from a downtown branch to one across town, or from the city to the surrounding suburbs — the analysis centers on quantifiable material harm: how much longer your daily commute becomes, how much more you spend on transport, whether the new schedule stops being compatible with childcare or other family obligations. If those costs are minor, or the company offsets them with a travel allowance, a schedule change, or a bonus, the transfer usually stays within the legitimate exercise of ius variandi.

To another city, province, or country, the bar is higher for the company. Relocating you to another city means, in practice, that you have to move, give up your home, or be separated from your family if you can't. That level of disruption is rarely solved with money alone. What matters is whether you signed a geographic mobility clause when you were hired, whether the company offered a full relocation package — moving costs, housing, a cost-of-living adjustment — and whether there was a reasonable alternative, such as staffing the position locally, that the company dismissed without reason.

3. Step by Step: What to Do Before Accepting or Rejecting the Transfer

1. Get the change in writing. If you were told verbally or through an internal chat group, reply through the same channel asking the company to confirm, in writing, the effective date, the new place of work, and the stated reason.

2. Quantify the concrete harm. Since the 2026 reform, Section 66 LCT expressly names only "material harm" — no longer moral harm — so you need a number: how much your monthly transport cost rises, how many extra minutes or hours you'll spend commuting each day, whether you'll lose the ability to keep another job or care for a dependent.

3. Send formal notice before you refuse the change or treat yourself as dismissed. This is no longer just prudent — it's a legal requirement. Under the Law 27,802 reform, Section 66 LCT gives you the option to treat yourself as dismissed only "after formal demand, and if it goes unanswered." Send a free statutory labor telegram (through Correo Argentino, at no cost under Section 20 LCT) detailing the transfer, the concrete harm it causes you, and a reasonable deadline for the company to reverse it or offer an alternative.

4. Wait for the company's answer. If it offers to reverse the change, compensate the harm — a travel allowance, a schedule change, a bonus — or a reasonable alternative, weigh the offer before taking an irreversible step.

5. If the demand goes unanswered, decide your strategy. Under the current, post-2026 version of the law, the path it expressly provides is to treat yourself as dismissed through the employer's fault — constructive dismissal — and file for full severance. Unlike the regime in force before March 2026, the law no longer provides a court action to get you reinstated to your original position while the case is pending. Before you make that call, a labor lawyer needs to confirm your case rises to the level of a breach serious enough under Section 242 LCT.

4. What You Can Claim If the Transfer Is Abusive

If you treat yourself as dismissed over an abusive transfer, you're entitled to the same package as a dismissal without cause: seniority-based severance (Section 245 LCT), notice pay, dismissal-month integration pay, and pro-rated Christmas bonus (SAC) and vacation pay. The 2026 reform (Law 27,802) redefined how Section 245's base is calculated: it now takes your best normal, regular monthly pay over the last year, excluding SAC and any non-monthly items, capped at three times the applicable union-scale wage, with a floor of 67% of that pay — the Argentine Supreme Court's Vizzoti doctrine, now written directly into the statute.

One important clarification about the litigation path: until March 6, 2026, the prior text of Section 66 LCT (Law 26,088) gave you a second option besides constructive dismissal — suing to have the altered conditions reinstated, with an interim injunction freezing your terms while the case was pending. The Law 27,802 reform eliminated that path. Today the law only provides for sending formal notice and, absent a response, treating yourself as dismissed.

Part of the legal literature debates whether, while your formal demand is pending, you can refuse to comply with the transfer without walking off the job — invoking the exceptio non adimpleti contractus under Sections 1031 and 1032 of the Civil and Commercial Code — without that being read as abandonment. It's a debated route, not one the statute guarantees, and it requires having sent formal notice first, in good faith. Talk to a labor lawyer before you stop performing your duties on your own.

5. Common Mistakes When Claiming Over an Abusive Transfer

Not sending formal notice before you stop showing up at the new location. Since the 2026 reform, prior formal notice is no longer just good practice — it's an express requirement of Section 66 LCT before you can treat yourself as dismissed.

Accepting the transfer without putting your objection on record. If you show up at the new location without objecting, and let a lot of time go by, the company can argue you tacitly consented to the change.

Not quantifying the material harm. The reformed text of Section 66 LCT requires explicit material harm. Claiming in generic terms — "it hurts me," "it doesn't work for me" — is far weaker than backing your claim with concrete numbers on cost and commute time.

Confusing a desk change with a real transfer. Being moved to another floor or area within the same building, with no change to your commute, doesn't trigger the Section 66 LCT scenario covered here.

Overstating the amount you claim. The 2026 reform (Section 10, Law 27,802) added an explicit penalty to Section 20 LCT for "inexcusable overclaiming": if you objectively overstate what you're owed, court costs can fall on you, jointly with the lawyer representing you. Claim what you're actually owed, backed by evidence.

Relying only on WhatsApp or an informal email. To create reliable proof, the channel is the free statutory labor telegram, not a chat the company can later claim it never read.

Resigning instead of sending formal notice. If you resign, you lose your right to severance, even if the transfer was objectively abusive.

Frequently Asked Questions About Abusive Workplace Relocation

This guide is informational and doesn't replace professional legal advice: every relocation has its own facts, and the final analysis depends on them.