We could fill pages with palpable data on how the “chainsaw plan” is lived in the pockets and popular tables. Lower parity, dining rooms without food, grandparents who faint because they stop buying medicines, the worst salary in dollars in Latin America, a resounding drop in consumption.
But there is one fact that encompasses many of these grievances. What the working class lost in their salaries. The loss of wages for all workers in the first month of the right-wing government totaled $1,128,278,000,000. That is, more than 1.1 billion, 1.1 trillion pesos. A difficult number to understand. Obscene. Multimillionaire. Shocking.
To have an idea, it is 83 times more than the amount that generated the political crisis between the governor of Chubut and the Nation. Or 75 times the Strengthening Fund that this Monday was eliminated from the Province of Buenos Aires and led Axel Kicillof to join the claim of the PRO governors.
All the media talk about these transfers. They play Milei’s tweets to “Nachito” and Axel’s conference. But no one talks about the biggest robbery in recent years.
The data, with surgical precision, comes from a study by the Mirador de la Actualidad de la Economía y el Trabajo called “The salary blender.” This is a team of economists who, based on official data, were able to determine the impact of the Government’s first measures. “Milei decided to carry out the second sharpest devaluation in the history of the country in December 2023 and the effect on inflation was immediate,” begins the report presented a few days ago.
The loss of purchasing power of the salary was, in just one month, 16% for state workers, 11% for registered private sector workers and 14% for those who work informally.
As a result of those blows, this transfer that exceeds one billion pesos was produced. The study explains that other amounts must be added, such as what was not collected by the State (employer contributions), what social works and even unions lost. “The sum of the values lost with the salary liquefaction is 1.65 billion pesos.” And who kept that money? “Most of those 1.65 billion were additional profits for exporters, food, energy and others.”
We are then faced with an enormous transfer of income from the working class to business accounts, which keep an increasingly larger portion of the wealth generated. As we have been showing, during the governments of Mauricio Macri and Alberto Fernández there had been a significant jump in this theft. In the first months of that government it has skyrocketed even more.
The other side of this loss is the growing profits of food companies (Molinos, Ledesma, Mondelez), supermarket chains (Coto, Chango Más, Cencosud), energy companies (YPF, Shell, Edesur, Edenor) and a list that includes to the owners of the country. Devaluation, price remarking, tariff increases and downward parities.
It is a confirmation that this wealth, while poverty increases, arises from the increase in the exploitation of the working class, not only of those sectors but of the entire population that makes the country function.
That robbery did not occur in silence. A few days after the devaluation there was a mobilization of the left and combative sectors to Plaza de Mayo (12/20). A few days later the CGT had to gather in the Courts and the “labor” part of the DNU was suspended. It is an attempt to put a twist on that theft. A month later the union centers had to call a general, albeit partial, strike. In some unions they agreed to joint ventures that try to recover some of what was lost, but they never succeed. Social organizations mobilized for the minimum wage, which impacts social programs, but the Government cut it. This Monday many provinces were experiencing a teaching and state strike, and other unions came into conflict.
That is to say, there are forces. But the CGT, the CTA and their unions are in truce mode. They give time to a right-winger who doesn’t waste a second to hit us. How long are they going to wait to call assemblies? How long are they going to wait to call a fight plan?
There are a billion reasons to smash the chainsaw and blender.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
