The Association of State Workers called for a strike on Friday against “massive layoffs and the dismantling of the state”
From the early hours of yesterday, the government positioned police and military personnel at the doors of CONICET (Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council), the National Meteorological Service, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Secretariat of Labor and the former Ministry of Science and Technology, among other state dependencies. “The national government is the one acting outside the law, with out-of-proportion police presence in every public dependency”, Rodolfo Aguiar said.
The Association of State Workers (ATE, by its initial in Spanish), led by Aguiar, held a plenary session yesterday and called for a strike on Friday, with demonstrations all across the country, against the “11,000 layoffs we have had this week and the attempt of Javier Milei’s government to dismantle the state”.
Aguiar repudiated Milei’s policies and celebrated that yesterday “most workers entered the Ministries and dependencies and occupied their positions”, although he stated that “this is not over. This is just beginning, because the government is looking to fire 70,000 state workers and attempts to make the state as we know it disappear”, he said.
“It is a huge and never-before-seen attack on the fundamental rights of workers. That’s why today, in our plenary session with over one thousand delegates from all over the country, we delved into our national struggle plan”, he emphasized.
In conversation with TV station C5N, the union leader said that yesterday “some workers were crying as they found out they were fired. They will pay for those tears”.
Aguiar warned yesterday that President Milei and his officials could “end up in prison because of these massive layoffs, because it’s a criminal offense”, since the President decided to “break the Argentinian legal system: causing massive layoffs is a violation of fundamental rights, which is a statutory offense in our Criminal Code”.
“This union is here to unconditionally defend workers who are under attack. Massive layoffs are a collective tragedy. The state is different with 15,000 less workers. They are eliminating public policies”, he said.