The State Workers Association (ATE), the largest union of public sector workers in Argentina, has denounced to the International Labor Organization (ILO) the dismissal of more than 50,000 State employees that the president of Argentina, Javier, plans to dismiss. Milei. The general secretary of ATE, Rodolfo Aguiar, has expressed that it cannot be accepted that the response to this deep crisis is 50,000 laid off in the State and the approval of the Bases Law, which incorporates an “absolutely regressive” labor reform. According to him, in 2015, the ILO already studied 63 countries that promoted similar legislation around the world and all of them failed. “To end the employment and salary emergency that exists today, we must do the opposite of what this Government is doing,” he pointed out. Furthermore, Aguiar has argued that the efficiency of the democratic order of a country can be measured by the effectiveness of freedom of association, which is why he has dared to affirm that without freedom of association there is no democracy and that, in Argentina, “it is democracy itself which is at risk at this moment. “The process of criminalization of protest is very serious. We cannot make it natural that the homes of union leaders and headquarters are being raided,” he denounced. For the union, the Government’s economic program is focused on handing over to foreign powers all the wealth produced exclusively by the workers, and it is with unity of the labor movement and a people who refuse to sign their own death certificate that they are going to “defeat.” “The Government’s economic measures up to this point have been lapidary. In just five months, poverty increased drastically and destitution doubled. At this moment we are witnessing a phenomenon of impoverishment of the poor in the country,” Aguiar added. Last Wednesday Milei announced his decision to fire another 50,000 officials to “reduce the State by half”, as he had promised in the campaign, and in the midst of disputes with the State Workers Association (ATE) union over the imminent wave of layoffs “My best-known phrase is ‘outside.’ And they are campaigning around the world with the ‘outside’. It meant taking the ministries in half. That was reducing the State in half. We are going to end up firing 75,000 people, we have 25,000,” Milei assured during a meeting at the Latam Economic Forum 2024, as published by the Argentine newspaper ‘La Nación’.
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