Buenos Aires. Civil servants in Argentina staged simultaneous protests in several public institutions on Wednesday, demanding the reinstatement of thousands of fired employees.
The facilities were guarded since the early hours of the morning to prevent the protest. The state employees’ union (ATE) had called for people to visit public administration offices “massively and simultaneously”.
“The day is beginning and we are already seeing that the security forces are more preoccupied with intimidating workers than carrying out their actual tasks, such as fighting drug trafficking,” denounced ATE Capital.
The Ministry of Security, led by Patricia Bullrich, had ordered extensive operations involving police officers in uniform and plainclothes as well as employees of private security companies. According to media reports, there were more security forces than employees in the corridors and offices of state bodies for hours.
The Secretary General of the ATE, Rodolfo Aguiar, said: “We will exercise our rights to strike, demonstrate and assemble.” If violence and repression occurs, only the government will be responsible.
As Página 12 reports, around midday, in view of the massive gathering and the persistent demands of the ATE delegates, the authorities allowed employees to enter some offices so that employee meetings could take place there as planned.
We have managed to get into most of the ministries and offices “and fill our jobs. But it must be clear that today nothing ends, everything begins, because the government is definitely targeting the heads of the 70,000 contract employees and is trying to “To make the state, as we have understood it so far, disappear,” said Aguiar at the rally at the entrance to the Labor Secretariat. There were 517 layoffs there, and the ATE registered a total of 11,000 by last weekend.
Most of the layoffs affected employees with contracts with the state that are renewed annually and which the current administration had extended for just three months at the end of December last year until this week.
“The level of aggression we are suffering is enormous. The attack on our fundamental rights as workers is unprecedented. Faced with this situation, we must deepen our battle plan,” said Aguiar. The ATE has called a general assembly of more than a thousand delegates from all over the country and from all public institutions for Wednesday afternoon to decide on a new general strike.
The chairman of the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA), Hugo Yasky, announced legal action against the wave of layoffs in court and with the International Labor Organization (ILO). The actions of the government of President Javier Milei are not justified: “This is a measure to destroy the labor movement. These are dismissals of people who have been with the company for up to 15 or 20 years. They want to destroy the state, degrade the Ministry of Labor and “Turn this country into a place where workers become slaves. It is a police and repressive state,” Yasky said.
At the government’s morning press conference at Casa Rosada, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni confirmed that the number of layoffs in the state was 15,000 and would not reach the figure of 70,000 that Milei had previously mentioned: “The final figure is 15,000 contracts that have not been extended. We have spoken about it repeatedly, there is not much more to say, it is part of the work we are doing to slim down the state. It is staff that is not necessary, that does not continue to receive an income from the state receives”.
He threatened the unions with “legal consequences” for those who enter ministries to hold meetings.