On December 10, 2023, Javier Milei was sworn in as President in Congress and then gave a speech with his back to it, on a half-empty square. Under the premise that it was necessary to carry out a profound adjustment or hyperinflation would occur, he anticipated from day one that “the caste” was the working people. The course of salaries, retirements and popular incomes during his first year in government confirms who Milei passed the chainsaw on, as analyzed by Mónica Arancibia.
Under the strategic objective of restructuring the country at the service of international financial capital, he carried out a brutal adjustment on the working class along with anti-worker reforms. Resisted in the streets, Milei had the help of political and union sectors that provided governance to promote them. The specialist Luis Campos explains the effects of the adjustment on the loss of jobs and the heterogeneous dynamics of salaries, as well as the consequences on working conditions implied by the changes in the Labor Contract Law and on Public Employment, contained in the Base Law.
From Caputo’s megadevaluation, liberalization and the fiscal chainsaw that plunged the economy into recession, the LLA government moved to a currency appreciation scheme that fueled financial speculation. Contrary to the promised dollarization (although with a liquefaction of income and savings that enriched the banks as analyzed in this note by Emiliano Trodler and Martín Schapiro published last month), he maintained the hold on the dollar and continued paying homage to the IMF. In the first half of the year, large companies listed on the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange quintupled their profits based on a phenomenal transfer of income from employees to the concentrated sector of the economy, as demonstrated by an IPPyP study and explained in greater detail. Claudio Lozano in an interview with this medium.
The tree of the recent (and relative) slowdown in inflation could cover the forest of the risky consequences on the productive network that the model proposed by the government implies. “And if it turns out well”… for whom? ask Lucía Ortega and Martín Schorr, continuing the analysis of the effects of regressivity in the primary distribution of income and the sectors of activity that were favored or harmed by economic policies, taking into account their participation in the total value added. An example subject to comparison of this model on a regional scale is the case of Peru, its benefits exalted by low inflation and growth in exports, but based on enormous inequalities, a plundering of natural common goods and job insecurity. widespread, as Matías Hof analyzes. The spill never came.
Among the winning sectors of this first year with Milei, the privatized energy companies that benefited from strong tariffs and deregulations stand out, as Julio Pérez details.
Although the industry lost relative weight in the total product, some sectors that occupy key positions in the production and distribution chains of goods and services managed to take advantage of the gains from the devaluation and offload the costs on final prices, as is the case of the great foods, as Guadalupe Bravo analyzes.
From the Left we do not want to debate where the chainsaw passes 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 centers end the truce. A true plan of struggle is necessary to confront the looting and the chainsaw that the Government, the big employers and the IMF seek to deepen, and to avoid a new social catastrophe by imposing a different kind of solution with the broadest popular mobilization.
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Special thanks to Luis Campos, Claudio Lozano, Candelaria Botto, Martín Kalos and Martín Schorr for their participation.
This special report was prepared by Guadalupe Bravo, Mónica Arancibia, Lucía Ortega, Matías Hof and Julio Pérez.
Images and design: Fernando Lendoiro- Enfoque Rojo.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
