TSU Cosméticos closed its plant with 150 jobs at risk and wages unpaid

TSU Cosméticos was a direct-sales cosmetics brand with 45 years of history in Argentina, selling beauty products, makeup, fragrances, household items, clothing and accessories by catalog. The family-run company — owned by Armando Pérez, former president of the AFA Normalization Committee, and led by his son Sergio Pérez — employed about 1,000 people across three plants, according to its own website. The Villa Lynch factory in San Martín produced semi-solid makeup and perfumes.

Workers say the company was being stripped down since 2014: two of three plants were closed, production was outsourced to lower-wage workshops, and hundreds of workers were laid off. In November 2018, 30 more workers were dismissed; in early February 2019 workers protested over unpaid salaries, the Christmas bonus and the year-end bonus. Layoff telegrams blamed a 'severe financial solvency crisis' that led to a bankruptcy process.

In late March 2019, TSU closed its Villa Lynch production plant, putting 150 jobs at risk. The company was in concurso preventivo (bankruptcy protection), owed three months of salaries, and had begun outsourcing entire production lines. It initially offered to pay the previous month's salary in three installments, then said it had no way to meet even that debt.

Late that year, severance agreements were signed with the endorsement of the Ministry of Labor, with payment in 12 installments — the company stopped complying in September. In January 2020, laid-off workers protested again in front of the plant, blocking Calle Francia; TSU trucks still left the factory full of merchandise every day, while the company claimed it had no money. By then, only about 300 jobs remained at the San Martín plant, down from roughly 1,000 a decade earlier, and wages and severance remained unpaid.