The State Workers’ Association in Argentina said they will take “preventative action” against a mass discharge of government workers on the horizon. A three-day strike will take place including all food safety workers in Argentina.
The Argentinian State Workers’ Association (ATE) announced an upcoming strike in protest of the upcoming government layoffs in a press statement released on Monday. ATE said that sources from within the “transition meetings” going on in the government informed them that a database of over 60,000 government workers is being built to facilitate the mass discharge.
The government of Argentina is in a transition period as president-elect, Javier Milei, will take office on the 10th of December. Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), intends to significantly reduce the Argentinian government while in power. This will include reducing the number of state ministries from eighteen to eight, leaving public workers in these without employment.
ATE announced a three-day strike, which will include workers from The National Food Safety and Quality Service (SENASA), interrupting export and import activity as safety checks will not be available at ports and airports. The strike will also temporarily lift the sanitary safety barrier in Patagonia, which protects the region’s agricultural production from plagues and diseases.
Reductions by the thousands
Milei’s plan, explicitly, is to discharge all the people in political roles hired in 2023. Additionally, cabinet heads from all ministries are to be discharged, as well as their services like security and chauffeurs, unless they are “necessary.” According to ATE, the transitional government is building a database including government workers hired this year as well as those that have no stability in their contracts, in order to lay them off. According to ATE, this leaves 64,000 state workers at risk of being fired, of 350,000 state workers currently under contract.
“It is clear that the adjustment variable [of the transition] will be us workers,” said the secretary general of ATE Rodolfo Aguiar. “We have to prepare to face a period in which they (the government) will try to take all of our rights.”
ATE met with the Argentinian Judicial Federation to “analyze the upcoming discharge situation.” They concluded that meetings between different state departments needed to occur. ATE encouraged that state organisms should meet with each other to organize collective action.
Milei’s anti-government stance
Milei’s campaign has been critical of the structure of the Argentinian government, particularly its size and the complexity of its regulations. In his party’s state plan, it says the government “is the cause of the impoverishment of Argentinians” due to its regulations.
“The state’s function is not to involve itself in each aspect of individuals’ lives (neither for good nor evil),” says LLA’s state plan. “The state’s function is to protect the fundamental rights to the life, freedom and property of individuals.”
Milei has also been critical of corruption in the government, claiming that the current economic model puts most economic decisions in the hands of bureaucrats, “who coincidentally end up millionaires.” His party’s state plan includes a reform to reduce state spending by 15% of the country’s GDP.
Aguiar of ATE believes Milei’s plan does not guarantee workers’ rights in its current state.
“Governments have to guarantee social peace through policies, that’s not on the workers,” said Aguiar. “We have a right to act in legitimate defense if we feel we are in danger.”
