Next Monday, July 1, marks the three-month deadline that Javier Milei’s government set for all forms of contracting in the National Public Administration. Every quarter, workers face the uncertainty of whether or not they will continue to have a job. Legislators from different parties of the regime granted Javier Milei – through corruption and repression – a legal tool to carry out the “reform of the State.” Even so, the last word lies with the resistance and struggle of the workers.
At the close of the working day on Friday and after the announcements by spokesman Manuel Adorni, some advance news of layoffs in different public departments began to arrive. “Sweeping” and “cleaning” were the words used by Javier Milei’s spokesman to refer to the state families they want to leave on the street. The Government’s contempt for workers is evident. And it is not only with the public sector: they have just passed a law that lowers taxes for the richest and reinstates the income tax for workers.
What role will the various unions play? So far, faced with the first rounds of layoffs, the leaderships – with their differences – have maintained a divisive attitude, and no union or central has been able to promote a forceful plan of struggle, with measures of unity that would tend to grow in mass and be sustained over time. At the same time, there has been a lack of decision-making bodies that involve all workers, such as general assemblies of members with the objective of organizing a plan of struggle.
In some cases, the decision was made to exclusively take cases to court on an individual basis, instead of relying on collective action measures that could arise from assemblies or coordination bodies from the grassroots. However, the workers’ willingness to fight was demonstrated at times when they were called to different bodies, such as the two forceful national strikes promoted by the CGT and the CTAs, even though they were of an isolated nature.
The role of the state unions linked to the CGT, such as UPCN, was directly compromising: not only due to the lack of combat measures, but also due to the open complicity that Andrés Rodríguez admitted with the labor reform that the Government included in the Law of Bases.
While notifying UPCN is cleared. ATE cannot look the other way and bet on measures divided by sectors. From the @marronclasista We say Plan of struggle now against layoffs, open assembly of state workers and other sectors in struggle.
— Leo Amendola (@aladelos) June 28, 2024
According to union sources, the number of layoffs in the public sector so far is between 10,000 and 15,000. And now this new batch is being added.
So far, there are known layoffs in:
Last Friday of the month and thousands of layoffs are confirmed throughout the national State. They are families who stay on the street while Adorni rejoices. As in the law, UPCN is deleted and left to run. Nobody knows what ATE will do, since it did not announce a strike. #NoALosDespidos
— daniel gorber (@danigorbe) June 28, 2024
News in development
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
