Last week the governor attacked the provincial teacher strike by lying about what a teacher earns. Now, facing the second day of the provincial strike, like a resident, he takes attendance at each school. He is becoming more and more similar to Milei. To stop his hand, it is first necessary to debate democratically in assemblies and convene a provincial Congress. Secondly, it is essential to unite our demands with the community and other sectors of workers, as Misiones did.
After having approved Milei’s Bases law, the governor is emboldened: threatening teachers with discounts for going on strike. He first launched his media campaign with lies about the province’s teacher salary, as the “highest in the country.” It is a fallacy: it may be that salaries are nominally higher than other provinces, but that does not mean that the basic family basket in Patagonia is more expensive than the rest of the country. To put it in other words, “we are the teachers with the highest salaries in the country who do not make ends meet.” A graduate teacher barely makes $650,000 when the basic basket is $850,000. In Rio Negro, the government pays poverty wages.
But the governor’s anti-strike rage brought to light methods already used by the repudiated Arabela Carreras: the attendance button on a strike day. In an anti-union persecution outside of all elementary rights. Weretilneck requires us teachers to confirm if we will attend school or if we go on strike. Antidemocratic.
We already saw this line against unemployment in March, when he persecuted the public health nurses who stopped him in all the provincial hospitals. She even summed up workers, while threatening them through the provincial network and inviting state personnel to resign and move to the private system.
With this entire campaign, Weretilneck wants to hide a problem that is much bigger than our salary. The province is adjusting and eliminating school programs such as School Skiing, with schools without heating, without guaranteed school transportation, among many other things that the entire educational community suffers from. The thing is that every peso that is collected instead of being allocated to education, health or housing; It ends up in the pockets of the holders of the Castello Bonds, that increasingly unpayable provincial external debt. The social and economic situation of the students’ families deserves special mention: precarious, poor; Schools provide food that they do not have at home.
How do we face it?
We have to stop his hand. But for that it is necessary for the central leadership of UnTER, Azul Arancibia, to break its coexistence with the government. Assemblies must be called by school and by section and the convocation of the Provincial Congress must be ensured without any postponement. It was already essential for UnTER to call for a strike on the day the Bases Law was being discussed. The Central – like the CTA and CTERA at the national level – decided to abstain, leaving us in worse conditions to fight in the streets against the disastrous RIGI Law, delegated powers, labor reform and privatizations. Now, when it is decided to go on strike, it is decided in the Plenary of General Secretaries, between the central leadership and the sectional leadership, but postponing the Congress that was to meet today, June 19.
It’s time to fight more seriously. We need to have spaces for debate in each school, reaching out to the parent community and coordinating all sectoral claims. Taking the example of Misiones, which with a determined fight and in unity with the rest of the state, students and poor people twisted the arm of the fiefdom of Rovira and Passalacqua.
From the 9 de Abril teaching group we promoted from the first day that Milei took office the need to advance in the organization, trying to get teachers to be part of the political struggles against the worst measures of Milei’s adjustment plan. And at the same time we stand in solidarity with the fight of Health and that of the Universities. We believe that to rise to the occasion, UnTER and the entire CTA must stop fighting half-heartedly and individually by union branch. We demand that UnTER ensure the convocation of a provincial Congress and assemblies by schools and sections. Call the entire educational community to raise a common list of demands. Against Weretilneck and Milei’s adjustment we say: money for Education, not for the Castello Bonus or the IMF.
