This Friday dawned with the ski and pickets in the electronic and other metallurgical plants of the island. The unemployment had been following for 9 days and promised to continue. At noon the signing of an agreement was known by the National UOM (Furlán, Brunelli) and the sectional, with the association of Argentine Electronics Terminal Factories (Afarte).
What does the agreement say?
1. The refund of workers to their usual tasks.
2. Companies will not produce dismissals without cause until December 31, 2025 or cease -term or eventual term contracts (except an agreement signed in Fapesa and Solnik).
3. The signatories are committed during the validity of this agreement to maintain social peace without collective work conflicts.
4. The signatories undertake to form some dialogue tables that made up of representatives of companies, trade organizations and invite the provincial and nation authorities.
What does it imply for the Fuegian people?
Immediately, for metallurgical families (other unions), the news of work continuity until December 30 was lived with relief. The contempt of ministers and even entrepreneurs had put them as “discard material” from the moment that Decree 333 (cell phones) and the threat of eliminating 19640 (industrial promotion) was known. The main flag was “we are going to defend the jobs” and with the strike, the pickets and the mobilization made it fulfilled (and if the companies do not do it there will be a new conflict). It is a first brake against the “shock” policy of a government that wants to carry everything ahead and the large groups like Mirgor and Newsan.
They enter the factories again with the pride of having given a very hard fight and aroused the accompaniment of the entire population, including the attention of the national media. It is a great experience. In addition, the metallurgical strike managed to gather around the claims of other sectors: teaching and state that fight against the adjustment of nation and province governments, as well as other sectors affected by the adjustment. If the government and businessmen agitate the ghost of the chainsaw, they will now have to be attentive to the ghost of the strike with pickets, assemblies and marches.
But as a metallurgical worker told us when the camp was disarmed this noon, “we will supposedly be like this until December with this pull or perhaps extend until March next year, we do not know what this is going to happen this will be a day to day.”
It is that the agreement raises a “negotiating table” of which the businessmen and the guild will participate, it is not clear if the national government will do so and if it will maintain its uncompromising position. Surely there are, among four walls, negotiations between Chernjovsky (Newsan, Caputo (Mirgor) and his government friends to see what suits each one.
There was also talk of a monthly assembly so that workers are aware of the negotiations.
But distrust has its explanation. On the one hand, the government maintains the decree and argues that the agreement with the IMF implies eliminating the “industrial promotion.” On the other, the entrepreneurs who talk about “stability” are those who have thousands of workers in 3 different floors: troops, ppd (continuous benefit personnel) and hired. Even with monotax. For them “stability” is very relative. But they also suffer practically a salary freezing in a province not only cold but face. One million for troops and 650 thousand for hired.
That is why another of the flags was the “defense of rights.” They know that in order to improve their profits, entrepreneurs can deliver some of the benefits they receive but will try to recover it with sweat and workers muscles. By force of extra hours or greater productive rhythms.
That is why “social peace” leaves a bitter taste. The job stability clause until the end of the year was an elementary peace that the workers’ families needed, but now they want to tie them hands and feet to claim with salaries, pass to plant or better conditions.
The sensation of many metallurgists who followed the conflict in plants from other provinces is that the strike had deployed the true labor force and allowed it to deepen it, with the solidarity of other sectional, to claim many pending issues. The National UOM was not played along that path, even to shake its frozen parity.
That danger that the patterns and officials saw. That is why they sought an agreement even if it is precarious. They had to comply with the contracts they have with the marketing chains.
Sovereignty is still in dispute, how could it be otherwise. In a country delivered to the large industrial, oil and extractivist multinationals, the Fueguina struggle showed a light but the United States will continue to move forward with its business and military bases.
How to continue?
The fire in front of the giant plants in silence, the mass mobilization that toured the beautiful landscapes of the end of the world, the word of the workers who shook the screens of the great media with their courage, the disobedience to the mandatory conciliation, the image of the strike while Milei tries to prohibit it, are not images that are easily erased.
They are pillars to face what is coming, with more force. In the next months it will be key to be organized, with assemblies that allow to discuss each step and face the maneuvers that those from above will do, with the unit with teaching and all the unions, with the solidarity of other sectors. Because the Tierra del Fuego is nothing more than a chapter of an attack on the entire working people, before the complicit look of the CGT and the PJ.
The only way to defeat it is with unity beyond the unions and provinces, until they convert those partial strikes into a general strike until defeating Milei, the IMF and its plans. Because the only one that can organize the economy and its production at the service of the whole society is the working class. The one that has no privileges or benefits to lose, everything to conquer.
Long live the Fueguina fight!
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
