The CGT small board met this Tuesday and decided to give Milei a Christmas gift in advance: from now until the remainder of 2024 there will be no more strikes. The decision occurs in a context of more than a month without meetings of the Cegetista leadership where there were different attacks by the Government, mainly against aeronautical workers.
The announcement is a new collaboration to continue advancing Milei’s plans, emboldened in recent weeks after the campaign against Intercargo workers and ratifying that its objective continues to be the privatization of Aerolíneas Argentinas. As if they lived in another country, or the news did not reach them, the leadership of the labor union did not even refer to this situation and on the contrary was quick to make it clear that there will be no new forceful measures until 2025.
Worse still, the union leaders let some reports slip to justify the decision by ensuring that “there are signs of improvements in the economy” and “recovery of sources of work in some sectors such as construction.” A mockery for millions who throughout these 11 months of government have seen how the purchasing power of their salaries fell, how service and transportation rates increased or have even been part of the almost 200 thousand registered workers who lost their jobs.
This attitude, added to the recognition that Héctor Daer made in October about the negotiations between the CGT and the government on labor reform, ensuring that “the law is already in place”, paints a full picture of the open betrayal of the vast majority of the bureaucracy. union and the active collaboration it is providing to advance Milei and Caputo’s program.
The “hard wing” are the parents
From different sectors there is an attempt to present the current panorama of the workers’ union as fractured within, with the existence of a supposed “hard wing” headed mainly by Pablo Moyano and some other leaders such as those in transportation. This differentiation is explained more than anything by the opposition verbiage of the trucker leader, mainly before the cameras and microphones, but it remains quite diffuse when it comes to evaluating the actions he has been carrying out as part of a supposedly “unruly” sector.
Without going any further, this Monday Moyano had confirmed in radio statements that “a national strike for December” was being evaluated, but this Tuesday he missed the meeting. The threats of this sector to call for new measures, to harden its stance towards the government and even to abandon the central office in the face of the majority sector’s refusal of its leadership remain only in words. “Enough dialogue with the traitors,” he had said just twenty-four hours before the union conclave, in what appears to be a new chapter of statements that only remain to fill the union pages of the newspapers and not much else.
Something similar happens with the leaders of the CATT (Argentine Confederation of Transport Workers), among whom is Juan Carlos Schmid (Draging and Beaconing) among others. The versions that became known after this Tuesday’s meeting claim that he had demanded an “urgent meeting of the Board of Directors” to discuss a new measure of force. Beyond the majority response of the leadership, which assured that this “is not on the agenda”, the supposed idea of continuity of a fight plan is quite far from the behavior that all transport unions have been carrying out. Isolated measures, such as the one they called on October 30 and which was divided by the UTA, are functional to Milei and the endless adjustment and only serve to wash their face and pretend as if they posed some resistance.
Strengthen the organization from the bases to impose a fight plan
The CGT’s position is increasingly openly collaborationist. They prioritize dialogue while Milei advances with its adjustment plan. A betrayal of the interests of millions of workers, who see how their leaders negotiate with the Government specific aspects such as the regulation of the law that penalizes blockades of companies while leaving their hands free to advance with the labor reform that seeks to reduce layoffs. , limit the right to strike, criminalize social protest and increase precariousness. The recent launch of the “Register of Independent Workers with Collaborators” (PADIC) is a clear example of this policy, which under the euphemism of labor modernization It seeks to provide a legal framework to disguise workers in a dependency relationship as if they were “independent collaborators”, denying them compensation, retirement contributions, medical coverage and sick leave, among other rights.
The attitude of the Peronist union leadership coincides with the orientation of all sectors of the PJ, which allow the Government to advance with the dirty work of adjustment and at the same time wait for it to wear out due to its consequences, to try to capitalize on it in the face of the elections. 2025.
Good debate by Zicarelli and Renou the other day, but the political axis was this. Everyone agrees. pic.twitter.com/EN477CId6m
— Pato del Corro (@Patriciodc) November 19, 2024
The government has been counting on the union bureaucracy as one of the fundamental pillars of its governability and its economic plan. A plan that only benefits large businessmen and financial capital, while poverty is at the highest levels of the last 20 years. In this context, the role of the CGT makes it clear that it prefers to negotiate and bet on “dialogue” with Milei than to organize the strength of the working class to confront all attacks.
You cannot trust a treasonous leadership, which moves between secret meetings and tours of Government offices. More than ever it is necessary to bet on organization from below, as retirees, health and education workers have shown recently. Aim to massify and unify these fights to build a force capable of confronting the government and the employers, and impose on the large unions a fighting plan at the level of the ongoing attacks. That is the only realistic path if we really want to defeat Milei’s anti-worker policies.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
