Federico Puy is a teacher, delegate and Press Secretary of the Ademys union, the upper secondary education association of the City of Buenos Aires. He is a reference for the Corriente Nacional April 9 teacher and is currently in Misiones to bring solidarity to the teachers of the City of Buenos Aires and as a correspondent for La Izquierda Diario.
“Here, most teachers tell you that this started at the beginning of the year, when the school year began, and that they already knew that with the adjustment both in the province and at the national level, their salaries were going to be much lower. of almost a poverty wage”.
“A single-time teacher who has just started working in a school earns only $280,000 and with the removal of subsidies from rates, for example, paying for electricity in this province costs more than $100,000, that added to the rents and the cost of general life, no salary could cover the basic family basket in the province”.
“Now the health sector has joined in, the things they say are terrible. The emergency people who work in ambulances are in the black, they earn just $1,000 per guard, they have to work dozens of overtime hours to try to make ends meet. and all public personnel here, public workers, teachers and state workers, are all forced to have a second or third job in trading, or Uber, or sales, or something else because it is impossible to make ends meet.”
“What happens is a very contradictory situation because most of the repressive forces even have a teacher, a friend, their partner, or whatever as a family member, so there is a common issue. But many say, after today’s repression, and previous days as well, that even though the police officials say that they are going to negotiate based on all the sectors that are in struggle now, many say it is possible that they can fix it and that later too They repress us, as has already happened at other times and today a little, beyond the fact that it was a hierarchical staff that was not attached. There is already a level of discussion in teaching, today there were thousands of teachers who mobilized to the legislature’s house. where they know that the situation has to turn out differently because if they settle with the police and do not settle with the teachers, surely the roadblocks on Route 12, the mobilizations, the camps, will be removed due to repression, so there is a discussion very contradictory in the province and shows a crisis of what the entire political regime is.
“Here there is a total hatred of the governor, not only because he is considered someone from a political force that has been governing the province for more than 20 years with relations with the large business community of Yerba, commerce, logging, and that also all The world that you are walking down the street tells you, both Rovira and Passalaqua, have a lot of fortune in Brazil, in other places, that is, they recognize him as a politician who became rich during these years at the expense of the missionary people, of the. missionary workers and he went first with Sergio Massa’s lists, first early elections, then he attached the list of deputies and senators to the Sergio Massa list, invited him to the province, campaigned for him and Javier Mieli barely won by a significant percentage here in the province, then a few weeks ago he lent him the votes for the Base Law of the seven deputies in Congress.
“Rovira is the one who leads the legislature, today he was here in the legislature while we were mobilizing, he came out to say that he was going to continue in the legislature, making laws, governing, and that he really leads the province and both the Frente Renovador de the Concordia as well as the Province. So today several teachers were singing to him that they are afraid but it was not all directed towards Passalaqua but really towards whoever directs the political power here in the province. It is like a generalized fatigue, generalized insults from all the teachers who are there. mobilized, from health personnel and a lot of anger because it is a 20-year regime with miserable salaries, with million-dollar profits from many businessmen and a government like this.”
“As the days went by, there was a lot of discussion that really showed the political situation we are going through. There is a sector of teachers who are Milei voters and who even carry flags to the countryside that say the fight is only provincial because they do not want There is discussion about Milei. But many are already questioning, both because of the adjustment in general and even teachers who said ‘I thought that Miley at Luna Park was going to say something in support of the missions teaching struggle and she didn’t do it’, so “Everything that is said about caste and corrupt politicians, well, it is not being shown here and these are sectors that are in the fight.”
“The other day on the Garupá bridge, which was a picket of almost six of almost 88 hours on a very important national route, there was an important sector of voting teachers who were in the fight and on the picket and that occurs in debates in discussions Here there are different tents that are being set up in the camp where there is a lot of political discussion of this type and in recent days several more teachers have been encouraged to say that this is provincial and national and today there were many posters in the mobilization that said “It’s provincial and it’s national”, I think that a political experience is being made there and the class struggle helps a little to draw these conclusions.”
“Here the union that is the base of Ctera, at the national level UDPM, signed a salary agreement behind the backs of all the teachers. It is an important union here in the province, some say it will have more than 15,000 members. It signed against all teaching 34% in dues, along with another union from the private education sectors, without notifying anyone, without telling them that there was a joint meeting, without saying that there was a meeting or anything. And after that signing, the teacher struggle was reaffirmed, there are many organized sectors. by assemblies, by school, by region in the interior part of the province, the strength that teachers have who fight even against their own union leaders like those that I said about Ctera is really very important, and new forms of struggle emerge both with the crisis of the political regime of the governor and the province as well as the bureaucracies that are historical allies of these Peronist governments. Self-organized sectors emerge that question the bureaucracy and there are more than four self-convened sectors, other teaching unions that do not have legal status that are in the struggle, other unions that are trying to obtain their status and that did not sign any agreement and that are in the fight, really showing what the betrayal of what this teachers union was. And there it is funny but also sad at the same time, there are like many painted overalls in the camp with the islands of the wax teaching union here in missions calling them traitors and it is impossible for them to even come close to giving solidarity or something and the contradictory thing was that today the Ctera called a national strike where the statements that said nothing did not include the word Missions.”
“The removal of FONID implies part of the provincial crisis with teachers, the budget cut, also in educational budgets, but they did not mention the word Missions because really here they fixed something behind the backs of all teachers. And in this new self-organization teachers emerge that become references, assemblies arise, today it emerged that they were going to organize WhatsApp groups from different schools in Posadas to facilitate the camp. They have common forms of communication, they hold assemblies with families and they also have their students who are children who work in the camp. in the grass fields, for example, then there really is a very important social connection with these sectors that are more combative and that are following the struggle.”
“Today several teachers told us that their salary receipts should be loaded with the settlement that the government has given, that was promised on Twitter and it circulated quite a bit among the teaching staff. Obviously the teachers do not believe them but what they can even reach is very low. Whether they give the increase that the bureaucracy signed, or if they don’t give anything, because the recomposition they are fighting for is a 100% salary increase. Even here the gasoline went up too, many have to travel many kilometers to their schools, teachers who have to travel many kilometers to their schools. They have to leave positions in other schools because they cannot pay for the trip. So at least for now I see it as very difficult for the government to unblock if it does not give a considerable increase, and there are more sectors that are saying well if this continues. So we have to redouble our efforts, we have to cut more provincial routes and one day have to mobilize the largest number of teachers and health workers who are making a takeover here in the Ministry, to Posadas to see if we can achieve some negotiation with the government. But for now the government, other than social networks and the occasional WhatsApp call, has not made any concrete offer.”
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
