The National Government continues adjusting and taking measures in favor of big firms and banks. Each day a new factory is closed, new limits are imposed to labor lawsuits and to our right to strike, unions are intervened, etc.
By PSTU-Argentina.
Before this, the CGT only published a “warm” statement; the STIA (food industry) of Rodolfo Daer betrayed the Pepsico workers’ struggle, currently fighting to reopen the factory;[1] and the CTA of Yasky and Baradel wrapped up its negotiation with the government by negotiating the end of the struggle of Buenos Aires teachers with the government by practically the same wage that governor Vidal had proposed before.
Massa, Cristina [Kirchner], Randazzo and all the figures of the PJ [Justicialist Party] called themselves “opposition” but they only speak during electoral campaigns, while they pass the Government’s bills in the Congress and apply the adjustment in the provinces they rule. Just take a look at the province of Santa Cruz, where Alicia Kirchner [former president Nestor Kirchner’s sister, governor of Santa Cruz] aims to trial the Directors of the teachers’ unions who refuse to give a list with the names of the teachers currently in strike for wages.
They are all accomplices of Macri and his party Cambiemos. They agitate to the people promising in their campaigns what they don’t do in power, and they are letting this war plan against the workers to be implemented.
This is why we cannot expect anything from these politicians; nothing will change with the next election. We need to surround the struggles in solidarity to stop the government and bosses, and we need to use this campaign to organize more people for the battle taking place in each workplace and in the streets, against this plan that sentences us to hunger and unemployment.
With this conviction, the PSTU put its candidates in the FIT [Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores – Left and Workers’ Front]. Our campaign is to give everything we have for the struggles to achieve a victory and to prepare the field for the fight we have ahead: to kick this government and bosses out and to impose a workers’ emergency plan to avoid ourselves to be the ones to pay for the crisis they have caused.
A high dollar and super-profits for the banks
An eternal external debt, and layoffs for the people. The government says that the economy is growing again, but the truth is that, over the last days, they closed the Pepsico factory in Florida, leaving more than 600 families on the street; they fired 50 Walmart workers; they closed the auto-company Hutchinson, leaving another 350 people without a job; and they fired 800 more workers of Atucha, in Zárate.
Unemployment and hunger grow together with the outrage of workers. With the rise of the dollar, once again the big companies which speculate but do not invest a single Peso in the country are being favored, while the workers cannot afford the basic basket. Now, we will suffer a new hit with the last fuel prices increase – and another one has been announced for October.
If this was not enough, the government drives the flexibilization of collective contracts and outsourcing to exploit us even more, causing thousands of layoffs and suspensions that push to reduce the wages. The scam of the loans only favors the banks, which continue making profits. This last week, the government acquired more debt to pay a new share of debt interests. And we have already seen what a scam it is to indebt the country for 100 years, sentencing our future.
It is clearer each time: with this government, only the rich, the companies, and the banks will win. Whether you invest money in jobs, wages, housing, health, and education for the people, or you give it to the bankers and vultures of the external debt. Only the working people mobilized can help this.
They attack the unions because they are after our achievements
The intervention of the Newspapers Delivery union, the Sugar sector in Tucumán, the Judicial workers in Mendoza, and the threat of YPF of punishing the demands of oil unions, are really serious, and the union leaderships are guilty by omission. This is part of an anti-union hike by the government to clean the way to attacks our achievements. The plan of the government is to increase the retirement age, to impose a labor reform to benefit the companies and avoid labor lawsuits when we are fired, to limit our right to strike, etc.
Break the truce!
We cannot be naive regarding this. The hate against the bureaucrats that lead the unions must not interfere in our full repudiation to this measure against workers. On the contrary, we have to be alert and mobilized. We need to demand from the leaderships to take a stand immediately and to break the truce, to organize the rank and file and call for a general strike in defense of union rights right now, supporting those in struggle against layoffs and anti-workers reforms. To take Macri out, we need to coordinate the struggles and the popular outrage.
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Notes:
[1] The government ordered the closure of the PepsiCo factory (food industry), leaving more than 600 workers’ unemployed, with no warning: they arrived at the factory and it did not open. The workers occupied the factory, and governor Vidal (Buenos Aires), of Cambiemos [Macri’s party], sent the Buenos Aires Police Force and Gendarmerie to repress the workers, leaving more than 15 people wounded and several detainees, including Human Rights activists, workers of other factories that went to express solidarity, and sons and grandsons of Desaparecidos.
Macri hits, the opposition turns a blind eye
