Transport unions call for strike in Argentina

Seven key transport and transport unions in Argentina, meeting at a National Transport Conference (Mesa Nacional de Transporte), decided to launch a 24-hour protest strike against the policies of the government of Javier Milei which, in less of a year, plunged millions of Argentines into poverty. unemployment, hunger and extreme poverty.

Workers demonstrate in front of the Argentine National Congress against Milei’s change to labor laws. (Photo by Axrg / CC BY-SA 4.0)

At last week’s conference were leaders of truckers, pilots, flight crews, as well as railroad, dock, shipping and transit workers.

The protest strike will take place on October 17, an important anniversary in the history of Argentine Peronism. On October 17, 1945, more than 100,000 workers gathered in Buenos Aires to demand that Secretary of Labor Juan Peron and his wife Eva be released from military arrest. Nine days earlier, the military junta, of which Peron himself had been a part – alarmed by his demagogic pro-union and corporatist policies – had placed him under arrest.

Although conference delegates said the choice of date had nothing to do with the October 17 anniversary, they did so with large photographs of Juan and Eva Peron behind them, symbolizing the subordination of unions to a bourgeois party which provides the fascist Milei with essential support. .

The call for the protest strike was triggered by the proposed privatization of the state-owned Aerolíneas Argentinas.

Aerolíneas, a successful airline established as a government airline under Peron in 1949, was privatized in 1990 under the Menem (also Peronist) administration as part of a neoliberal wave of privatizations, which transformed the airline without debt into a private company. managed by Iberia Airlines (Spain). Two years later, due to mismanagement and corruption, the airline had accumulated debts of $530 million and had to be rescued by the Argentine government through the purchase of shares. In 2008, heavily in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy, the airline was renationalized under the (Peronist) administration of Cristina Kirchner, to be run as a public service and largely thanks to the sacrifices of its workers.

The privatization of Aerolíneas Argentinas was part of the government’s policy to privatize all possible public companies. This position was supported by Transport Secretary Franco Mogetta, who called on Congress to approve a decree that will be made official this week, in order to “force Aerolíneas Argentinas to submit to the dictates of the market and operate like all other airlines “.

On September 27, the Milei administration declared its intention to re-privatize the airline by transforming it into a private company. Privatization of the airline was initially included, then removed, in the Bases Act (also known as the “omnibus bill”) approved by Congress earlier this year.

In his message motivating the decree, Milei said that in a country with a poverty rate of 52.9 percent, “it is irresponsible and unacceptable for the state to continue to finance the (airline’s) deficit and privileges of a few by taxing those who cannot do it. arrive at the end of the month.

Specifically, the Milei administration identifies the “privileged few” as the airline’s supposedly overpaid pilots.

The president’s message contrasted the poverty-stricken wages and pensions of the nation’s working class with the wages and benefits of pilots. “Pilots’ monthly salary ranges from $2,400 to $8,000…family members and friends get free tickets. »

The government, which has broken off negotiations with the pilots’ union, is thus trying to pit the most oppressed sections of the working class against the pilots.

Manuel Adorni, Milei’s press officer, denounced the fact that the airline employs 15 pilots per plane, which he considers “absolutely unnecessary”.

Currently, the airline carries 11 million passengers per year on 95,000 flights. It is the only airline to serve 22 cities in the interior of the country.

Nothing in the decree’s message recognizes that the conditions of poverty affecting millions of workers and retirees in Argentina today are the direct consequence of Milei’s brutal austerity policies. These policies have included the removal of food rights and the cancellation of wage and pension increases to keep up with the rising cost of living, including food, fuel, medical care, child care. children and housing (Total Basics Basket, Canasta Basica Total, TCC).

Recent statistics indicate that Argentina’s poverty rate among households living below the GCR in the first half of 2024 reached 52.9 percent, the highest in 20 years, an increase of 13 percent since Milei took power. The level of indigence, i.e. households unable to afford the basic food basket (Canasta Basica Alimentaria, CBA), stands at 18.1 percent, compared to 6.2 percent in the first semester 2023. For children under 14, the figures are even higher. more alarming: 66 percent, or 6.9 million people, now live in poverty and 27 percent are destitute, or more than 3 million children, unable to provide for the most basic needs of life, condemned to a life of hunger, with little or no education.

This month, municipal surveyors in the industrial port city of Rosario (population 1.4 million) reported a 40 percent increase in the number of people picking up trash (cardboard makers) in downtown Rosario. Nationally, more than 150,000 workers make a living from collecting cardboard and other materials, a profession that did not exist before 2001, a mark of poverty that increases every year. Cardboard workers, many of whom are homeless, report that recycling companies that buy their recyclables have reduced the amount they pay. Currently, each collector earns less than half of the minimum average daily wage.