BUENOS AIRES.- He government of the president Javier Miley downplayed the first strike general with which the unions challenged their plans for reform and adjustment of the economy and considered a dialogue with the leaders of the force measure unfeasible.
“We thank the millions of Argentines who have not joined this paro… different reports from different associations indicate that compliance was very low,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni told reporters.
“The strike was attended by 40,000 people, which are the ones we saw on the street,” said the official.
Adorni said that for the government on the day of strike called by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) -the largest union center in Argentina- passed normally, with public transport running for a good part of the day and many businesses open in the capital.
Milei faced the first general strike summoned by the powerful Argentine trade union movement just over a month before his arrival to the presidency on December 10, 2023. The measure of force targeted economic and labor reforms that limit the power of unions and policies of sharp cuts in public spending.
The strike was accompanied by street marches in Buenos Aires and other cities.
Meanwhile, unionists maintain that the strike had massive compliance in the country and that the protesters in the capital numbered 600,000.
Adorni considered that the strike was of a political nature and constituted an example of the “spasms of a union caste in retreat” and ruled out the possibility that the government could establish a dialogue with the protest leaders considering that they have incurred “a quite heavy verbal pyrotechnics.” However, he noted that “in any case we understand that it is a part of unionism.”
In this way, Adorni referred to the words of Pablo Moyano, deputy secretary of the truck drivers and one of the leaders of the CGT, who said that if the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, carries out the adjustment measures “the workers, retirees and the most humble are going to carry it on litters, but to throw it into the stream,” in reference to the polluted river that runs through the south of the capital.
“We do not enter into this level of dialogue because we do not consider it to be dialogue. We understand that it is a part of unionism that does not want to lose privileges. Saying that they are going to throw a minister into the stream is a violent act, especially in a democracy,” said the official.
The general secretary of the CGT, Héctor Daer, questioned the government’s “bad diagnosis” of the measure of force and pointed out that “the strike was something that transcended the workers. If he does not see it that way, the head of state is going to make mistakes. People are explaining to him that he has to take other attitudes and they tell parliament that he cannot betray,” he remarked in statements to Radio 10.
For the strikers, the structural changes proposed mercy in a presidential decree that contemplates the modification of hundreds of laws to deregulate a heavily intervened economy and a bill that covers the political, productive, social, tax and retirement areas, among others, will reverse the rights won by workers, They will destroy the possibility of mobilizing unionism and will dismantle the State.
Both initiatives are in Congress. An opinion that the ruling party achieved on the bill would be discussed next week in the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies with a very uncertain future because the most dialogue-oriented opposition legislators who signed it still maintain strong disagreements with the government over its content.
Milei maintains that his reforms mainly seek to drastically reduce the fiscal deficit, which he blames largely for inflation of 211% annually, and to lay the foundations for economic stability and growth.
Source: With information from AP
