The Association of Hierarchical Gas Personnel (APJ Gas) confirmed its adherence to the general strike called by the country’s labor centers for this Thursday, May 9, with the aim of “defending” themselves against the attacks of the Government of Javier Milei, who seek to convert to all “precarious” workers.
“Because we must defend ourselves. Because we don’t want to be all precarious, in its monotributist version. Because we maintain that the labor rights achieved are not a gift from anyone and they ensure a minimum level of decency in the daily struggle that exists in labor relations. Because we intend that pensions do not continue to be an adjustment variable that condemns the workers who support the system to systematic poverty,” they explained.
The union’s position was also ratified in the sense that “salary is not profit” (against the official plan to restore the Income Tax), opposing “tax injustice being law”, while “it benefits from fabulous exemptions for large companies, active and passive workers are punished without shame.”
Furthermore, a position was established against the “handover of our natural resources and strategic companies under the pretext that conditions will be created for future investments” and the abandonment of the “principle of energy supply to our people under the cover of saving exports, whose economic result will remain in the hands of a few.”
“Changing this country does not mean handing over the levers of power to a small number of large companies so that they destroy national sovereignty and the perspective of expanded and sustainable social justice,” they emphasized. And they added: “Because we are the ones who produce wealth, but they insist on consolidating unsustainable levels of poverty with the pretext that the market will regulate the imbalances. We also experienced this policy on various occasions and it brought about situations of terrible inequality.”
From APJ Gas they remarked: “Because we do not want neomenemism. We already had that poisonous dose in its original version that left 20 million poor and a dangerous individualistic vision that still persists in a perverse form. We are aware that we cannot live with high inflation forever. We also know that savagely adjusting the weakest to say that they lower this corrosive “tax” is false and leads us down a dark path.”
And they concluded: “We workers are not suicidal or naive. We try not to be sweetened with nice words and impose a bitter reality on us. No government has the right to deceive us. Our duty is to discover the deceptions and oppose them effectively so as not to suffer the disastrous consequences of scorched earth policies. The anger, the confusion, the frustration also brought us here. There are no excuses. We believe it is necessary to rebuild collective self-esteem and the Nation project without ambivalence. We workers have a responsibility in that path. But first things first. In order not to continue losing rights, possibilities and perspective, we stop the country. It is not a desperate cry. It is a sign of coherence. We don’t give ourselves away. “We don’t give in.”
