Less than 24 hours after the half-sanction of the new version of the Bases Law, which contains privatizations, powers to dissolve state organizations and labor flexibility, The CGT will mobilize towards the Labor Monument on May 1 under the slogan: “Rights are defended, the country is not sold.” The central call is at 10 in Independence and Defensea symbolic crossing, but the labor union will replicate the mobilization throughout the country.
The mobilization was called by the CGT Board of Directors on April 11, one day after having the first meeting with the Government in Casa Rosada. The march to the Monument to Labor is part of a fight plan of the central that began last Tuesday when the Federal University March was accompanied and which will continue on May 9 with the second strike against the management of Javier Milei, after the massive strike with mobilization carried out in January.
“The demand will have to do not only with the commemoration of this historical date but will also have as an agenda a document from the country that we propose, in which we will discuss issues that have been disrupted in recent times,” Daer anticipated last week, in the previous day of the university march and after issuing a harsh statement against Milei’s statements on the national network on Monday the 22nd.
While waiting for the document that the CGT will make public on Wednesday, the Government obtained the support of the PRO, radicals and the Making Federal Coalition on Tuesday afternoon to advance a reduced version – the same as the new version of the Bases Law – of labor reform. Although points that clashed head on with the unions were removed, others that also clashed were maintained. were rejected by the headquarters and that the union leaders made clear in the meeting at Casa Rosada. These are the change of the compensation system for a termination of employment fund and the extension of the trial period.
At the Direct Council meeting in which the fight plan taken up last Tuesday by the public university was announced, the center also issued a document titled “Agenda for a New Social Contract – Argentina, towards a country with Development, Production and Work ” in which it demands the “right to participate in the discussion and design of the society to which we aspire” and presents programmatic proposals in all areas in 13 pages.
In that document, the CGT does not avoid the debate on labor “modernization”, which the Government advanced, without open negotiations with the central office, this Tuesday with the help of the dialogue opposition; to a lesser extent than what was attempted with DNU 70/2023 and which found a brake in the Judiciary. “Move towards labor legislation appropriate to the characteristics of today’s society with its new rights, which contemplates the technological paradigms and the technical training that it demands, affirming in turn the Collective Agreements by activity as an indispensable tool for this change,” marks the document.
In a few prolific days of statements, the CGT once again expressed itself about the direction of the liberal-libertarian government after Milei’s national broadcast last Monday. “What the national government needs to tell,” was the title of the statement after the president’s brief speech in which he celebrated a fiscal surplus, with numbers drawn. This weekend, Milei redoubled the bet and talked about how “salaries are starting to beat inflation.”
In last week’s document, the center told the Government: “Not only do we disbelieve that it is sustainable over time but, most seriously, it is done at the expense of a strong social adjustment without having productive investment and employment generation”.
The objective of the mobilization will be to reproduce it in all the provinces and will include the presentation of a document. ANDThis will be a task for the Ministry of the Interior led by metallurgist Abel Furlán and who has contact with the almost 80 regional offices that the CGT has throughout the country.
The differences between the unions and the national government are exposed, despite the fact that the resistance in the streets missed the debate and half a sanction this Tuesday, the protests promise to escalate in the event that Milei achieves the sanction of the Bases Law in the Senate and advance with the state scrapping. If privatizations and labor reforms did not occur as proposed in the official norm, other difficulties for workers are already exposed: the brutal loss of purchasing power and jobs..
