In the first six months of Javier Milei’s government, the number of independent and dependent workers contributing to Social Security schemes fell by 612,139according to data from the Undersecretary of Social Security. This reduction is due to layoffs and job terminations or the move to informality, and are the consequences of the adjustments made by Milei and Luis Caputo.
A total of 12,323,706 contributors were registered in May 2024, while in the same month of 2023 it was 12,935,845, that is, almost 5% lessThe largest drop was among public and private employees, which fell by 301,876 people, followed by independent workers (-291,949) and domestic workers (-18,314).
Of the -301,876 dependent workers in May of this year, -150,869 corresponded to the private sector, -67,133 to the public sector and other regimes, such as provincial and municipal -83,874, mostly public employees.
According to the report in year-on-year terms (May 2024 versus May 2023), “there is a reduction in the number of contributors of 422,728 workers, mainly explained by the decrease in those who work independently (-294,826), among which the self-employed stand out as the group with the greatest year-on-year reduction with -294,284 people (-12.7% in relative terms). This is followed by contributors in an employment relationship with a decrease of -105,761 workers, among which employees in the private sector stand out with a reduction of -101,883 contributors (1.7% in relative terms)”. The layoffs and the fall in wages caused a collapse in the collection of Social Security resources.
The ongoing adjustment has slowed economic activity and plunged the economy into depression. In some cases, large employers took advantage of the situation to fire workers, as Fate and Bridgestone argue, despite their multimillion-dollar profits in recent years. Meanwhile, the Government emptied entire sectors of the Public Administration and fired state workers, thus layoffs were recorded in Social Development, Memory Centers, in the former Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, in INCAA, among others, and it also seeks to end public health as a popular right, as demonstrated by the layoffs at Posadas Hospital.
The Indec also reflected an increase in unemployment in the first quarter of the year to 7.7%, and it is likely to continue to rise. What to do? In the 12 thousand main companies in the country, which earned millions, it can be implemented the reduction of the working day to 6 hours without a reduction in salary, distributing the freed-up working hours and with a minimum salary that covers the family basket updated monthly according to inflation. This would create a million quality jobs. Any large company that refuses this measure should be expropriated and put into operation under the management of its workers, at the beginning of a rational planning of production in the service of the people’s interests.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
