The Government of Javier Milei chose education as a target of attack. He lowered teachers’ salaries, canceling budget items such as the Teacher Incentive Fund. He cut the budget for children’s food, which adds to the adjustment that the governors were already implementing. And it is proposed to attack the right to strike and declare education an “essential service.” All this within the framework of an inflationary escalation that has impoverished millions of working families, to whom is added the concern of being able to guarantee a school basket for their children or even choosing which child to send to school.
The adjustment is not exclusive to the national government. Added to the crisis left by the Frente de Todos government is that the governors are transferring the adjustment to the provinces. Instead of attacking those who have the most, the big businessmen, they also adjust the teacher salary, as Kicillof in Buenos Aires, Pullaro in Santa Fe and Llaryora in Córdoba already anticipated, proposing salaries that are behind the basic basket.
Faced with the announcement by the union centers that they would call a teachers’ strike, the government called a meeting next Tuesday of the provincial ministers of education and the teachers’ unions to agree on minimum salaries and guarantee the start of the school year. It is a clear “tightening” to avoid a forceful measure, not to restore the cuts or allocate a greater educational budget to schools.
The teaching unions grouped in the CGT, the Argentine Union of Private Teachers (Sadop), the Argentine Teachers’ Union (UDA), the Association of Technical Teaching Teachers (AMET) and the Confederation of Argentine Educators (CEA) immediately underwent this operation. ), who lifted the strike on Monday. Added to this is the partial lifting of the health union strike due to an agreement that does not even reach the most precarious sectors of private clinics, showing once again that the CGT continues to give the government respite. After January 24, the CGT did not call for any unified force measure to respond to the brutal inflation that already added 10% more poor people, reaching almost 60% throughout the country.
We go with everything on the 26th to impose continuity in the fight
The Ctera, for its part, cannot ignore the anger that is expressed in schools and the need to confront the attacks by Milei and the governors on education and salaries. She ratifies the strike. However, she summons him anticipating that she will not continue him.
Ctera’s tradition of leaving the provinces isolated is known in schools and it generates distrust when a single strike is announced as a measure to confront such an attack.
From the leftist teaching opposition we propose the need for a plan of struggle that continues on March 1, the day on which very important provinces such as Buenos Aires begin, which brings together more than 300 thousand teachers and 5 million students, a day also in which that Milei carries out the opening of legislative sessions. It would be a great opportunity to give a clear message to the national government and the governors that we have the strength to face this adjustment and the willingness to defeat it.
Therefore, this 26th let us prepare from below, together with the educational community, massive mobilizations to take to the streets and show the strength of more than 1 million education workers throughout the country. Let’s build the strength from below to impose the continuity of a fighting plan on the Ctera and the CGT until defeating the adjustment of Milei and the governors.
Let us unite with families, youth, and neighborhood assemblies and set up a strong movement in defense of public education and the demands of working families. Uniting our fight for public education with the demand to increase salaries and pensions, to bring down high rates in transportation and services, to defend the right to strike and protest.
There is money, the big businessmen have it and the IMF takes it. Enough of working people being the adjustment variable.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
