“The adjustment is not paid by good people, it is paid by criminals, it is paid by the caste,” Javier Milei repeated in several interviews during the electoral campaign, but this quickly changed, we were the caste. In his inauguration speech as president he already He anticipated what was to come, an adjustment against the working class.
In the speech the president confessed “there is no alternative to adjustment and there is no alternative to shock. Naturally, this will have a negative impact on the level of activity, employment, real wages, and the number of poor and indigent people” and it did. In December, the first measures of the “caputazo” that included a strong devaluation, an increase in public service rates, dismissal of state workers, freezing of Potenciar Trabajo plans, a brake on public works, among others, caused a jump in inflation, and a deterioration in the living conditions of the popular majorities.
The economy slowed down, causing a slowdown in the high levels of inflation, but the purchasing power of salaries, pensions and social programs has still not recovered what was lost due to the rise in prices caused by the aforementioned measures. That is to say, Inflation goes down, but you still can’t make ends meet. Furthermore, the decline in economic activity led to an increase in unemployment and poverty.
Not everyone lost. In the last year there was an increase in inequality and the transfer of income from wage earners to big capital deepened. In the first half of this year, businessmen improved their portion (Gross Operating Surplus (GSE), an approximation to the mass of companies’ profits) of the wealth pie produced to 33% compared to the same period in 2023, while The participation of Remuneration for Salaried Work (RTA) fell from 46.4 to 43.9% in the first half of this year, according to data from Indec. These data reveal which social class takes each part of the social wealth generated by the country’s workers.
Eternal months at the end of salaries and retirements
The president boasts of repeating that “there is a strong recovery in real wages,” but he hides the blow that wages received with the December devaluation. According to the latest data available from Indec for September, The salaries of the entire working class, formal and informal, lost 16.6% compared to November 2023.
Meanwhile, Within the working class the loss is unequal and informal and public workers are the most affected. In it formal private sector Salaries recovered starting in April, but this increase was insufficient. The purchasing power of this sector was 1.5% behind its level in November 2023 in September. This is the best-paid sector of the working class that has parity. However, it lost 24.8% compared to 2015 (September 2024 versus October 2015).
In it public sector (at all levels) the purchasing power of the salary was more fluctuating, but did not exhibit that partial recovery that occurred in the private sector: in September, the public sector showed a collapse of 16.1% in relation to November 2023. The decrease in relation to 2015 is 40.6% (September 2024 versus October 2015).
Due to the five-month delay in estimating the component of the unregistered private sector From the Permanent Household Survey (EPH) that is used to calculate salaries, the purchasing power of the informal sector shows an improvement in relation to November 2023. However, the collapse of the real salary for unregistered workers in September was 49.7% in relation to October 2016 (year in which the Indec series begins).
This deterioration in purchasing power is what explains why, although inflation slows down, salaries are not enough to make ends meet. Luis Caputo entrusted the Secretary of Labor Julio Cordero that the joint payments do not exceed 3% per month, thus seeking to depress salaries and consolidate the loss. It is to highlight the oil workers who, after a seven-day strike that paralyzed the country’s agricultural export production, managed to break the salary ceiling. This is the way to face the official adjustment plans.
Another target of Milei and Caputo’s attack were retired men and womenyet another Government that uses older adults as an adjustment variable. Milei changed the way pension benefits are updated through a decree, which established an update according to inflation since July. The trap of the formula is that it did not recompose the looting that caused the jump in inflation in December. Then the president vetoed the new pension mobility law promoted in the National Congress, which granted retirees a minimum increase: $17,000 per month per retiree who receives the minimum salary. The adjustment was not exclusive to the government, in Congress in addition to La Libertad Avanza, both the PRO and a sector of the UCR voted to defend Milei’s veto. The president called the deputies who voted in favor of maintaining the adjustment for retirees “heroes,” and they celebrated with a barbecue in Olivos.
The result is that The purchasing power of pensions registers on average (11 months) a real drop of 21% compared to the same period in 2023according to data from the Congressional Budget Office (CPO). The minimum retirement in October was $314,320.56 (with bonus included) while the basket for retirees, prepared by the Ombudsman for the Elderly of the City of Buenos Aires, was around $912,000. That is to say, that That minimum asset allows you to live only ten days of the month. The cut in salaries was also added to a cut in medication coverage by PAMI.
The retiree drama got worse with Milei, but it didn’t start in recent months. According to La Izquierda Diario estimates, between 2015 and 2024, maximum assets lost 51% of purchasing power, minimum assets (without bonus) plummeted 47% in real termswhile assets with bonus lost 32% (October-2024 vs November-2015). There is a historic looting of pensions.
The Government also attacked the social organizationsstopped delivering food to soup kitchens and cut off funding. As a result of a journalistic investigation, the food stockpile became known and the Ministry of Human Capital, whose head is Sandra Pettovello, let tons of food expire. According to OPC data, The Empower Work item had a real drop of 59.3% in the first eleven months of the year in relation to the same period of 2023, while The Food Policies category had a real cut of 18.1%.
Milei adjusts the most vulnerable sectors, thus poverty rose to 52.9% and reached 25 million people in the first half of 2024 (11.2 points more since the second half of 2023), and there are 3 million people that they are destitute, that is, they are hungry.
In this setback in the living conditions of the working class there were accomplices and guarantors of the adjustment such as the complicit role of the union leaderships that even negotiated with the Government such as the labor reform and now they have already taken vacations by ruling out a strike because “it is not the moment.”
Peronism also made its contribution to governability, such as the parliamentary support (provincial Peronism) that there was for the Bases Law, vetoes in retirements and university financing, as well as the role it played in containment to prevent the extension of resistance to adjustment. as happened in the national strikes, the university marches and other struggles in the country.
Chainsaw or adjustment with other modes, that’s not the question
President Javier Milei stated that he will continue “full with the chainsaw” and shared a photo with all the ministers and members of his Government team, and in the center of the image, a chainsaw. Meanwhile, sectors of Peronism point out that an adjustment was necessary, or as journalist Iván Schargrodsky recognized that Massa’s economic program was more similar to what Milei did “a fiscal adjustment with a drop in wages, but with sectoral compensation and without layoffs.” massive.” Meanwhile, Cristina Fernández indicated in letters and interventions that she was in favor of privatization, labor reform, among others. That is, Milei’s music of continuing to lose rights is also played by the opposition. For its part, there are no nuances between the ruling party or the opposition in deepening the extractive looting or in continuing to pay the debt, that is, honoring a scam.
The Left proposes another direction, we do not want to debate where the chainsaw goes or if the adjustment must be done with other manners. This year there were sectors that faced the Milei adjustment such as students, retirees, workers such as aeronautical workers, oil workers, teachers, to name a few, but the union leaders did not take the lead in organizing them or uniting these fights and fragmented each demand.
We must continue in each struggle, and fight to organize from below, unite the struggles and demand that the union leaders end the truce and call for fighting actions to confront the deep chainsaw that the Government wants to impose.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
