2023-06-19 06:16:58
Days ago in Salta, teachers and health personnel came out to fight for a salary equal to the basic family basket, 82% mobile for retirees, budget and decriminalization of teachers with causes.
The fight came from below, they coordinated and formed Autoconvocados de Educación y Salud.
The government of Gustavo Sáenz, of the FdT and close to Sergio Massa, repressed with gas and rubber bullets. The response was a strong provincial strike and a huge mobilization in several cities in the province, with 20-block marches in the capital.
A few days later, in Jujuy, in the framework of a teachers’ strike that lasted several days, the radical Gerardo Morales, from Together for Change (JxC), repressed the demonstrations, preventing teachers from reaching the provincial capital.
The teachers called themselves by the thousands before the Ministry of Education on Friday the 7th, within the framework of the joint struggle of various unions (state, municipal, banking, etc.).
Morales, in the middle of the electoral campaign, imposed a Decree against all state workers who march, exposing them to layoffs and disqualification from holding public office in a province where there is very little private employment. While he prepares a Constitutional Reform that severely curtails democratic freedoms.
Salta and Jujuy, two mirror-like neighboring provinces, governed by opposing parties that are facing each other in the next elections, that adjust workers and repress in the same way, more concerned with handing over mining resources such as lithium to multinationals and large companies in a frame of corruption.
Whoever rules, they do it against the workers and the people.
The economic and political crisis fuels the anger
While Sergio Massa travels from the US to China begging for help, the risk of new currency runs grows against the maturities with the IMF, with reserves almost exhausted in the Central Bank. Inflation does not fall below 7 or 8% per month. They don’t know where to go.
This causes a growing crisis in political alliances. Peronism does not have a credible candidate to present, and it is becoming increasingly fragmented. Together for Change candidates do not stop fighting. Javier Milei continues to promise a far-right economic and political plan.
The working people look at the electoral campaign with great distrust and without expectations.
Shortly after the elections, they fail to impose the “climate”. Nobody trusts that the next government will bring the solutions we need
workers resist
There are threats of unemployment from several unions, such as the railway workers, due to the reopening of parities. The traitorous leaders will probably raise up in exchange for a negotiating table where wages will again lose to inflation.
However, even if they have not yet managed to centralize, the struggles by province and by sector are multiplying.
There are teacher protests in Chubut, Neuquén, Santa Cruz, Tierra del Fuego, San Juan, La Rioja, Misiones, Jujuy, Province of Buenos Aires and CABA. In many cases, in unity with other states.
In CABA, educational assistants were mobilized due to their working conditions. Subway workers stopped all lines. In various factories, layoffs are faced, such as in metallurgists, or attacks such as in the Tire.
The cases of Salta and Jujuy may be a symptom: workers’ fights often begin in the periphery provinces and spread to the center of the country.
The self-organization, the calls outside the unions that are being seen, can also be a sign. The betrayal of the union leaders and their pacts with the Government force us to overcome the institutional frameworks of the unions and ministerial legality.
Unite and centralize the struggles
The task is to support the struggles that are taking place, coordinate them and centralize them in joint common actions. Claim strikes and provincial or regional fight plans. And not wait for the treacherous leaders to summon them, but to go out and organize ourselves from below. Preparing and organizing the fight, the extension and the search for support, the defense of the marches and actions against the repression.
We cannot give up until the elections. We have to confront the plans of the bosses, the governments and the IMF.
Take advantage of the campaign to organize ourselves and debate a workers’ exit
The PSTU socialists will put all our forces to support and unite the struggles. And we will also propose voting for the FIT-U, as an electoral tool to punish all the bosses’ parties that attack us. It will be a campaign to fight, and to debate the only worker and socialist solution for the country, facing the IMF candidates. A total change, which expropriates the large national and multinational businessmen, for a Socialist Argentina, without IMF or capitalists.
Posted on 06/13/2023
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