Buenos Aires. Unions of public land, air and maritime transport in Argentina protested this Monday in rejection of the labor reform promoted by the government of ultra-liberal Javier Milei, at the beginning of a week that will have a general strike on Thursday called by the main labor union.
In Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, the subway, train service, buses and flights of the state-owned Aerolíneas Argentinas were affected by workers’ assemblies that caused delays and cancellations of services.
On Tuesday social organizations will march again in the Argentine capital to demand increases in aid to soup kitchens and on Thursday the main unions anticipated their joining the general strike, the second against Milei’s policies since he took office in December.
The government applied a strong fiscal adjustment plan with the elimination of subsidies, liberalization of prices and increases in service rates, measures with which it obtained a balance in public accounts, but at the cost of growing social conflict with thousands of layoffs and the collapse of economic activity and consumption.
In this context, Milei promotes a labor reform within the framework of the so-called Bases Law that obtained the sanction of the Chamber of Deputies last week and must still be debated by the Senate, where the ruling party has 7 of 72 senators.
The bill contains, in its more than 230 articles, a flexibility for employee registration and extensive laundering for companies that incurred labor fraud due to tax evasion.
The project, which declares an economic and energy emergency for one year and delegates powers from Parliament to the Executive, includes a controversial regime of incentives for large investments for 30 years and changes in the retirement law, in addition to establishing a dozen public companies subject to privatization.
Congress is also debating a tax reform that includes the so-called income tax to tax salaries and pensions at scales that imply increasing the scope base.
On International Workers’ Day, May 1, the main unions marched in the Argentine capital to repudiate the government’s policy.
At the end of April, hundreds of thousands of people marched to denounce the defunding of public universities and the state technical and scientific research system.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated a 2.8 percent drop in the Argentine economy this year and projected annual inflation of 250 percent.
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– 2024-05-09 20:02:59
