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As they arrived to their workplaces on Friday morning, 132 employees from Argentina’s National Migration Department learned they had been fired from their jobs. All of them worked in checkpoints at the Argentine border in cities like Bariloche or Iguazú, which according to the State Workers Association are short in personnel. Like them, more than 25 thousand public workers are at risk of losing their jobs as their contracts expired on March 31 and President Mauricio Macri has not said a word about the possibility of renewing them.
The same situation took place on Thursday March 31 in several ministries, departments and agencies that depend on the national government. One Hundred and fifty workers of the Ministry of Economy were not allowed to enter the building where they worked so they decided to break in together with union members and occupy all floors, forcing the government officials to move to the Casa Rosada, or Pink House, in order to continue their work.
“We know there was going to be a press conference here at the same time the compañeros were not allowed to enter, so we decided to enter anyway to demand the reinstatement of all dismissed workers” Pablo Anino, a member of the State Workers’ Association told teleSUR.
Some other ministries have not lost any of their workers this week, but the workers are not sure it will not be the case in the forthcoming days. “There are 160 contracts that are due next week, but we don’t know what the Minister will decide. So we keep our eyes open and are ready to fight back,” says Ignacio Campora, a member of ATE who works at the Agro-Industry Ministry.
Macri forced teachers to join the struggle
The other union that is significantly relevant in the public sector is the Confederation of Education Workers, which brings together public school teachers in Argentina. They have announced they will go on strike April 4 since the government is not complying with the agreements they had reached on February.
“There are several provinces in which there is no agreement yet about the salaries and working conditions, and the agreements we have reached at the national level are not being respected” said Sonia Alesso, the head of CTERA. “We are also going to protest against the massive dismissals”, she added.
This new wave of massive layoffs in the public sector comes in addition to the more than 40,000 public employees that have already been fired under Mauricio Macri’s presidency. Despite having already faced a national strike by ATE on February, government officials refuse to acknowledge the dismissals and instead talk about “contracts that are expired and were not renewed”, which according to them is something different.
But those who are fired and are forced to look for a new job amid an economic recession disagree with the government.
The fact that the government only sees ‘contracts that expire’ where there are thousands of human beings that are left without their job and livelihood remains as one of the main changes Macri has brought to Argentina.
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