If the bolt of the Ministry of Economy on the parity still without more flexible, the CGT will remain closer to the fourth general unemployment that of a negotiation with the government because They will no longer be dialoguistic.
Is that the minister Luis Caputo wants salary increases They do not exceed 1% monthly And one of the recent agreements that remained In the sight is that of the Argentine Federation of Commerce and Services Employees (FAECYS)which signed for a 5,4% in three sections (1.9% in April, 1.8% in May and 1.7% in June). Its owner, Armando Cavalieri, It is a pure strain dialogue who speaks and negotiates with all governments for 40 years, and even with the administration of Javier Milei has been signing parity aligned to the pattern that sets economy.
“Our goal is hold the purchasing power of salary to inflation that still persists Said the trade leader after sustaining the salary increase. This agreement is part of a constant monitoring that we carry out to protect the entry of working families ”.
As they explained In the commercial union, the rise in March inflation, which reached 3.7%, accentuated the salary lag In the activity and the improvement percentages agreed with the cameras “They are not exaggerated.”
It is not what Caputo thinks, for whom, in tune with the forecasts of private consultants, in April It will go down Inflation (there is talk of 3%), but to maintain the descending trend, it requires prices and salaries Let them maintain below of the cost of living index.
Therefore, the Minister of Economy seeks that salary increases They do not exceed 1% monthly And the threat to the unions you sign above is, as is happening, the No approval of the agreements.
In the case of commerce, the quarterly 5.4% caught the yellow lights on the Caputo board, although the agreement signed last week by Cavalieri and the three chambers of the sector He still did not reach the Ministry of Labor that leads Julio Cordero To be analyzed.
There are other salary increases agreed in recent weeks that also They transferred the official guideline: According to the survey published in X Luis Campos, researcher at the Institute of Studies and Training of the Autonomous CTA, for example, SMATA closed a salary increase in 8,3% For the second quarter of the year and Health agreed with laboratory chambers an increase in 8,6% As of April (in fact, for the April-June quarter).
But the trade union parity is always clave because it reaches 1,200,000 workers and serves as reference For other sectors. And, in addition, because Cavalieri is an Adalid of dialoguistic trade unionism that has been hardening its position before the government by some negative signals in its activity, which affect salary, employment and union collection, but if they now do not approve the salary agreement could break your classic moderate attitude.
The stops to the joint, and the consequent threat of not standarding the agreements that exceed the official roof, is the big issue that It worries and unifies all union leaders. Before the march for worker’s day, the CGT co -owner Héctor Daer (Health) said that “There can be no price of price and peppeds.”
It is the same leader whose parity of the October-December period (11.4% in three sections) It was not approved because it exceeded the official pattern and in the following negotiation it used a distinct formula To adapt to the economy scheme: for the quarter February-April he signed for a 5,2% in three sections (1.9%, 1.7%and 1.6%), although for that percentage to be validated by work did not include No improvement in January, With which, in practice, those points above the official pattern were compensated in the total of 7 months.
Something similar happened to the Union of Tourism, hotel and gastronomic workers of Argentina (UTHGRA)which leads Luis Barrionuevo: Before the government pressures, in February he agreed to rethink his peer of the 16% for four months to an improvement of 7,6% that will govern for a semester. In this way, the increases that had been agreed by a 5% y 6% Monthly they came down from 2% In December until reaching 0,5% In May, as I wanted economics.
Now, in the midst of the attempt due to the cost of living, in the government they warned that Unions must abandon the idea of binding the peers to inflation and that they must negotiate basic salaries – more low – to allow companies to have a margin of granting higher increases to personnel demonstrating a Productivity increase, For example.
“The parity has to go down the band And then there is the highest salary, which is the one paid to the best, ”defined a libertarian official, who proposes a kind of Cultural change Of the trade unionists to negotiate the peers Without inflation as a parameter.
But in the CGT they warn that something like this, in any case, could be discussed if the cost of living remained in descent. After 3.7% in March, and without guarantees that it descends from April, No union leader wants And much less when some of them They will put their leadership into play this year in a Decisive series of elections that will be in about twenty leader guilds. And obviously no one can Ensure the votes of their affiliates if salaries do not improve significantly.
The salary dispute can be aggravated because most unions expect to claim the reopening of the parity After confirming 3.7% of March inflation. Shortly before Indec spread that figure, even, the own Labor Secretariat confirmed in a survey that of the 23 parity signed by the main unions for the January-March 2025 period, most were aligned With the guideline defined by the Ministry of Economy, but Only 2 had increases above quarterly inflation.
Therefore, if Caputo now stops the increases greater than 1% monthly, The war with the guilds will be inevitable.
