The Milei Government is determined to move forward with its agenda of adjustment and attack on labor rights and this Friday it will sign the decree making official the call for extraordinary sessions of Congress. The start date will be December 10 and will last until the end of the month, although there is already speculation about a possible second call for February 2026.
The menu? Budget 2026 and labor reform for sure, although other initiatives could also be included such as changes to criminal legislation, the Glaciares law and a “fiscal innocence” package (in Creole: less taxes for the rich) – Everything at the request of big businessmen and what the IMF and big capital demand.
The number one priority for the Executive is the 2026 Budget, which already has a commission opinion in Deputies. Milei and his small table want to enter the new year with the accounts closed in favor of adjustment: state salaries in free fall, cuts in items for key areas and a shield for the looting and debt model.
The project was presented in September and is the axis of negotiations with the governors, dedicated to exchanging their support for the chainsaw for funds for their provinces. The most emblematic case of recent days was that of Raúl Jalil, Peronist governor of Catamarca, who ordered three deputies from his province to break the Unión por la Patria bloc in a strong nod to Milei and La Libertad Avanza, which ended up consolidating itself as the first minority in the lower house.
But in addition to the Budget, the highlight of the ruling party is the labor counter-reform. Negotiated between the May Council, the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Deregulation headed by Sturzenegger, the project seeks to deepen precariousness and advance against historical rights, in pursuit of greater discipline against the working class.
Some versions indicate that next Tuesday the labor reform project could be announced. Among the central points of the different versions that have circulated so far are:
- Flexibility of working hours and vacations.
- Deregulation of collective agreements, allowing negotiations by company.
- Hour banks to eliminate overtime payment.
- Compensation in installments and with limits.
- Extension of the trial period.
- Weakening of the union organization and the right to strike.
- Salaries for “individual productivity.”
In essence, it is an advance to give more power to the employers, leaving workers without defense and legalizing conditions typical of more than a hundred years ago. It is enough to remember that the working day in Argentina of eight hours a day was established in 1929: 96 years passed, with impressive advances in technique and technology that could greatly reduce working times and improve working conditions, but exactly the opposite happens.
The government sells it as “modernization”, but in reality it is providing greater conditions for greater exploitation and precariousness, negotiating with the CGT that maintains a scandalous truce and refuses to call for mobilizations and a true plan of struggle at the level of the attacks that are coming. A position reinforced by the majority of the sectors that today make up Peronism, drawing conclusions from the right after the electoral defeat and willing to collaborate and negotiate with Milei. Or by “alternatives” like that of Buenos Aires governor Axel Kicillof, who has just approved a provincial budget with greater adjustment and indebtedness.
Far from this climate of resignation, the left appears and the enormous impact that the assumption of Myriam Bregman, Nicolás del Caño and Romina del Plá as deputies had in the last hours. Something that did not go unnoticed, and that shows the enormous sympathy that exists in important sectors both for the ideas of the left and for the determination to be an intransigent opposition voice, willing to fight against a government that only seeks to reset the country at the request of its owners. On this path there are also many other combative sectors, which have been part of the fights against the Milei government throughout this time and who demonstrated that only independent organization, struggle and mobilization in the streets is the only one that can twist its arm.
There is another way, but it needs to be built from below. Faced with the disciplinary offensive that they seek to impose to give employers a free hand so that they can dictate working hours, vacations or facilitate layoffs, it is necessary to organize resistance. History has already shown it: more precariousness does not bring more employment or better salaries, but quite the opposite. What is at stake in these extraordinary events is not just a law and it is necessary to build a response at the level of what is coming.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
