Home » Community cooks who feed 10 million people fight for their rights in Argentina

Community cooks who feed 10 million people fight for their rights in Argentina

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Community cooks who feed 10 million people fight for their rights in Argentina

They presented a bill to receive minimum wages and other benefits.

Every day at least 134,449 people, mostly women, work in one of the 34,782 soup kitchens What is in Argentina?

Thanks to donations or state subsidies, community cooks manage to feed 10 million people. That is the number of citizens who, according to the Ministry of Social Development, require some type of food assistance because they lack sufficient income to eat.

In shifts ranging from eight to 10 hours, these women prepare breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner for children and adults mainly in “the villas”, as the most deprived neighborhoods are called in this country.

It is hard and fundamental work, at a time when the economic crisis is deepening. However, they do not receive any salary nor do they have health insurance or pensions.

For this reason, they began to organize themselves and this week, under the motto: “Until the pot revolution!”managed to propose to Congress the creation of the National Program for Workers in Community Kitchens.

“The State recognizes the existence of soup kitchens but makes invisible the situation of community cooks who work without labor rights or salary. We prepare the food and deliver it to the thousands of families that need it, but we do not receive any type of income, nor do we have any labor rights for this work that we do”, affirm the activists.

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social justice

The initiative, which will just begin its parliamentary debate, establishes a minimum, vital and mobile salary, vacations, social work or medical coverage, work risk insurance, Christmas bonus, retirement and sick and / or accident leave or maternity and paternity leave.

That is to say, the minimum rights that any worker should have.

«In a context where there are 40% of people in a situation of poverty and 2.4 million people in a situation of indigence, female cooks feed more than 10 million people. This work is essential to guarantee access to food for vulnerable groups. This law is the kick to continue fighting for the recognition of all community work, “says the project.

The 40% million poor people established by official figures are equivalent to 18 million people, of which more than half go to neighborhood kitchens or picnic areas, which are unable to meet the growing demand.

«Women support the dining rooms and picnic areas and we want real recognition of what we do,” warned María Claudia ‘La Negra’ Albornoz on Monday, a reference for La Poderosa, the organization that began the campaign to collect signatures, marches and support mobilizations.

The cooks also launched a collective manifesto to tell about their work and the importance of activism in pursuit of their rights.

«Today we get up early, like every day. This time not only to defrost the chickens with the intention of treating them to a good stew, we all rolled up our sleeves because we have an appointment in the National Congress,” they stated in the letter.

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“Who would say no? While we were chopping onions for thousands of rations in each neighborhood of each province of Argentina, we were also amassing a feminist and popular slogan”, they added when sizing up the significance of the struggle they are carrying out.

Recognition

They also recalled that many have contemptuously called them “planeras”, in reference to the social plans provided by the Government. Or, flatly, “lazy”, despite the volunteering they carry out.

«We answer: we are human beings who feed ten million people from north to south and from east to west, with firewood, gas or burning anything that allows us to stir more than 35,000 pots every day. And yes, that has a heart: more than 135,000 hearts, which beat very strongly, so much so that sometimes we surprise ourselves”, they pointed out when questioning why, despite all their effort, they cannot have a decent job, like any other worker.

They also took the opportunity to criticize the privileges of the powerful who, regardless of the crisis in question, never lose, including members of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, along with the press.

“Did they forget that in the pandemic we were essential workers to sustain hunger? We don’t, we don’t want to get used to assistance volunteering anymore (…). Our villero feminism cannot wait for the rhythm of the bureaucracy, or that electoral time that makes you hunger and cry with so many layers of onion, “they warned.

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