Perón and the strike as a crime

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A few days after the authorities consecrated by 56% of the voters took office, several strikes have deprived the population of vital services.

Unions calling themselves the “backbone of Peronism” and others led by communist militants use force to eliminate the rights enshrined in articles 14 of the National Constitution and 10 of the Civil and Commercial Code.

They ignore (or pretend to ignore) that the so-called “right to strike” is not absolute, and article 29 considers “any assembly of people that claims the rights of the people and petitions in their name” as a crime of sedition.

They hide that Juan Perón decreed in 1945, when he was a member of the de facto government installed in 1943, that those who affected public services with strikes committed crimes.

Enemy of disorder, when the constitutional reform that enabled his re-election was passed in 1949, he expressly instructed the conventionalists not to admit strikes as a right and, even less so, strikes that affected public services. Thus, the conventional informant asserted that “a strike is not a right, and only brings about anarchy.”

It could not surprise anyone, then, that the so-called “20 Justicialist truths” did not mention the strike as a “right,” nor did they enable collective agreements or grant “stability to public employees.” For Perón, the public employee was, above all, a “servant”, part of a public function. “The State is not a corporation and does not pursue profit goals,” he taught; Therefore, you can never have conflicting interests with your collaborators…”.

The “collective agreements” and the so-called “joint agreements” were only legally consecrated in 1953, and imposed by the negotiations that were then initiated with the United States to install the Kaiser automobile factory in the country. The “joint agreements” were not the free will of the contracting parties; For their validity, they had to be previously “approved” by the government. Until that year, Perón did not admit “parities.” Salaries were set by the Executive Branch. That is, Perón himself.

In January 1951, a section of the railway workers’ union declared a strike that suspended services. One morning, at a suburban station, Eva Perón showed up (without hiding the signs of the illness that took her life the following year) to harangue and threaten the strikers. In that same year, after a military uprising organized by General Benjamín Menéndez, Perón had the law of “internal commotion” enacted – known by its abbreviation “Conintes” – which, among other punitive measures, established the prison sentence for organizers and participants of a strike. The sentence was served in a military establishment and the perpetrator of the crime was given the infamous treatment of “colimba.”

I bring this background to show that Perón condemned social disorder and considered the strike as a crime that could not remain unpunished. And he did not allow the unions to take over the State or behave like “a de facto State within the Rule of Law.”

I am not unaware that the past does not repeat itself. The capacity for material damage and moral offense that the unions have (with their “patotas”, “their thugs” and the threats to deprive the population of vital services) is such that I dare to doubt whether Perón today could defend the weak and punish the violent.

The political parties, the universities, the Public Ministry, the rulers in general lack convictions and skills to end the union dictatorship. And it is not an exaggeration to think that violence will increase. Until social peace is broken.

Inflation is a cause of poverty and crime, as is the issuance of money without backing. But there are remedies. The evil does not lie only in inflation. As long as the union and business corporations and the feudal rulers of the provinces continue to govern, there will be no progress or social peace.

I evoke Perón, of whom I was an adversary since February 24, 1946, but what has been reported so far enables me to shout (Milei style): “Long live Perón, damn it!”

* Lawyer