“This national strike is going to be a disaster, all the unions that make up the CGT adhere to the measure of force”. This was stated by the general secretary of the workers’ union, Hector Daerwhile denouncing that the national government is carrying out an adjustment “immeasurable and unprecedented in Argentine history”. He also clarified that the measure will be without mobilization.
Daer participated this Saturday in Rosario in the opening ceremony of the Faculty of Militancy, a space for training and debate organized by La Corriente, which leads Agustín Rossi. In this framework, he highlighted the role that the labor movement is playing to confront “this attempt to consolidate a historic change towards a model of inequality, without social justice, without union organization and without collective agreements”.
From the strike and mobilization of January 24 to the May 1 event (“it was much bigger than we expected,” he said), passing through the explicit participation of the CGT in the 8M marches, March 24 and the mobilization in defense of the public university, the union movement gained centrality in the protest movement against the government of Javier Milei. “It is the largest series of forceful measures in Argentine history”said the leader to underline the role of that organization.
“Today the union movement is at the center of the scene, because is organized, has concrete objectives and can react quickly“he said, although he stressed that “It is politics that has to build an alternative”.
In that sense, he recalled that after the sanction of DNU 70, which among other things included a labor reform that aimed to eliminate workers’ rights and limit the ability to organize to defend them, the CGT He reacted “quickly” in three ways: judicially, politically and through union action..
“Milei is carrying out an immeasurable adjustment without precedent in Argentine history.” “Milei is carrying out an immeasurable adjustment without precedent in Argentine history.”
“In the first case we achieved positive results in the first and second instance and now it is in the hands of the Supreme Court, in the second case we worked very closely with the legislative blocs of Unión por la Patria (UP) and other spaces such as socialism, Civic Coalition (CC) and part of the UCR to try to stop the Bases bill and fight against the December megadecree and budget cuts to education, public surpluses and social programs.”
In the field of union fight, he stressed articulation with “social movements, SMEs, human rights organizations, organizations of retirees, tenants and students” to face “this brutal adjustment”.
>> Read more: The CGT ratified the general strike of May 9 and announced that it will be “historic”
Although in many cases they could not reverse the measures, he noted that This action plan was essential for the first bill to fall. Bases, in January, and to cut from the labor reform proposal more than 40 articles that penalized worker organization and the Argentine union model. “When they wanted to eliminate the solidarity fee, they were not going for a supposed union fund but for the link that workers not affiliated with a union have with the collective agreement, What they want is to fragment the negotiation by branch to be able to do what they want with the workers”, he stressed.
Faced with calls to redouble the actions of the CGT, Daer assured that “the current scenario is complex, like a game of chess in which you have to know how to look at the entire board, manage time and have a strategy to know when to act.”
Leadership
At that point, Rossi, as host of the Cegetista triumvir, highlighted “the prominence that the CGT assumed in these months since Milei took officewith a very brave decision such as calling for a strike on January 24 and which finally ended up giving the necessary support for the first version of the Bases law to fall in Congress.”
The former candidate for vice president of Unión por la Patria highlighted that the current leadership of the labor union “is committed to the workers, to the university community, to the women’s movement and to the enormous mobilization of March 24 in a context in which that the current government does not repudiate the military coup of ’76.”
He stressed, in this sense, that the warnings made during the electoral campaign about the current president’s plans fell short. “It was not a campaign of fear, This government is scary because it lowered salaries and pensions, forces SMEs to close and encourages growing unemployment.”he pointed.
