Once Booming, Argentine Factories Struggle to Stay Afloat in Macri’s Neoliberal Era

As the streets of Argentina fill with protesters demonstrating against the government of President Mauricio Macri and his neoliberal policies, so-called “end-of-the-world” factories struggle to stay afloat in the country.

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The southern province of Tierra del Fuego was once a hub of activity. Under the former President Cristina Fernandez, the region boomed, with foreign companies queuing to have their products produced there.

Fernandez’s policies, which included taxing imported electronics and using import permit requirements to freeze trade, also benefitted workers - factory salaries were three times higher than the national average.

But under Macri, things have changed swiftly. The former businessman has already lifted some import restrictions and lowered tariffs on numerous foreign-made products.

The result has been a rise in unemployment. Amid a deep recession, almost 6000 people in Tierra del Fuego lost their jobs last year as cheap, imported electronics flooded the market — a 13 percent drop, the sharpest compared to anywhere else in the country.

"We have had a considerable loss of more than 5,000 jobs in the sector at least, because of various products that we no longer make since the national government for example, made the decision to stop tariffs and open up for imports like netbooks and tablets,” Marcos Linares, a union official at Metallurgy told Reuters.

“That made our production of that equipment completely unviable."

Lucas Silva was one of thousands of factory workers who lost their jobs. While working at BGH SA, an electronics manufacturer in the province’s city of Rio Grande, his salary had ranked him in the country’s top 10 percent of earners.

But since having been laid off, after BGH SA closed down its laptop unit ahead of Macri’s tariff reduction and began importing Chinese-made machines, Silva has been collecting unemployment benefits — and selling his children’s musical instruments to help make ends meet.

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"Nowadays, I'm trying to sell my things to make it month to month. It's difficult because I will eventually run out of things. For example, I now have to sell the things I have bought for my son and this won't work,” the former assembly worker told Reuters.

The province’s rising unemployment is also straining its social welfare programs.

"In social matters, to give you an idea, when we started this, we helped approximately 93 people very month in this office. At the end of last year, we had surpassed 200 people and now we are over 600 people," Malena Teszkiewicz, the city of Ushuaia’s Secretary of Social, Health and Human Resource Policy explained to Reuters.

While Macri continues with his economic reforms, nationwide strikes are gathering pace.

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In the latest dispute, the Union of Education Workers and the Association of Middle and Higher Education called a 24-hour strike to demand a higher salaries in the capital Buenos Aires.

Two days earlier, thousands of workers had marched to Argentina’s Plaza de Mayo in the city to protest Macri’s labor and pension reforms, which employees, retirees and trade unions deem “repressive.”

Overall, Macri’s austerity measures have led to more than 179,000 job cuts in the public and private sectors since 2016.