2024-02-15 02:03:49
Javier Milei governs under the friend-enemy concept. Whoever voted in favor of the failed omnibus bill is accepted by the President and is on his way to promotion to friend status. Those who voted against are unceremoniously written down on the list of enemies and for them there is not even the slightest forgiveness from God. This is how the President operated against the governors by removing subsidies for public transportation. Now he is launching an attack against the unions that carried out the massive mobilization against the DNU on January 24. The intention is to touch a sensitive nerve for the CGT unions, the resources of social works. A measure that will directly affect the millions of members who will see they lose health service coverage. Given this, the government believes that it will improve its situation to negotiate with the labor union. For now, the CGT is considering the reaction.
The official version is that the leadership of the Superintendency of Health Services (SSS) will prepare a report of all the funds that are sent to social works in the form of subsidies. “We must analyze its operation,” they say in the Casa Rosada and add that what is intended is to clean up the system of intermediaries. This is an argument similar to the one applied by the Minister of Human Capital, Sandra Pettovello, when stepping on the funds for community kitchens that social organizations have and that the government intends to cancel. The point is that by not granting the funds that correspond to them, the main victims are those who go to look for a plate of food in those canteens.
The maneuver in the case of social works is similar and attacks the unions that – incidentally – were protagonists of the 24E strike, where social organizations also participated.
As it turned out, the task of the Superintendency officials is to deliver to the social works the cost of the service for disabled members that was covered by the Solidarity Redistribution Fund. If the social works must take charge of this coverage, definancing will be the only consequence because this fund was also intended to reimburse the most expensive medical treatments and remedies. In general, they are rare pathologies that are controlled with medications that are purchased abroad at a dollar price. This is an old claim of the CGT that the then candidate of Unión por la Patria, Sergio Massa, had believed to be resolved without triumph. Now they wait – without much hope – for the libertarian government to provide the 138 billion pesos that the 2023 Budget contemplated for this type of situations and that Milei extended.
The CGT sought a meeting with the SSS authorities to resolve this problem that the government’s decision is generating, but did not receive a response.
La Rosada’s decision includes the elimination of automatic subsidies that are used to compensate contributions to social works made by monotributistas, retirees and low-wage workers.
The labor union must now decide what it will do in the face of the lack of communication with government officials. At La Rosada they are convinced that having their foot on these funds strengthens them when it comes to sitting down to negotiate with union members. Perhaps in the meeting at the Salary Council, scheduled for this Thursday, a preview of this correlation of forces can be seen.
Minimum salary
The organizations that participate in the National Council of Employment, Productivity and the Minimum Living and Mobile Wage (Csmvm) will meet again this Thursday. The meeting should serve to set a new salary floor. Nothing suggests that it will be an easy meeting. For example, the CGT requests an increase of 85 percent and the Autonomous CTA demands a monthly adjustment. During the meeting, which will be held at the headquarters of what is now the Ministry of Labor, there will be a protest by social movements demanding an increase in the amounts for community kitchens.
“The call to the Minimum Living and Mobile Wage Council is an area of dialogue with the aim of recovering some of the purchasing power of the most impoverished sectors,” said the labor union in its official account on the X platform. In any case, it is It is unlikely that an agreement will be reached, especially due to the request for an 85 percent increase requested by the CGT. The CTA-A is along the same lines and warned that the minimum wage last January was 156,000 pesos, while the basic basket for a worker without family burden was 491,367, and the basic basket of indigence in the same period was in the amount of 285,561 pesos.