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   Vol.65/No.3            January 22, 2001 
 
 
Unions in Argentina protest austerity, call March strike
(feature article)
 
BY PATRICK O'NEILL  
Some 15,000 workers marched December 19 to the government house in Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital. Their protest, called by the main wing of the General Federation of Labor (CGT), was directed at moves by the government of President Fernando de la Rúa to begin to dismantle the social security system.

The demonstration followed a November 23–24 general strike called by the two public wings of the CGT and the Argentine Workers Federation (CTA) to oppose that and other deep-going attacks on the social gains of working people. In addition to union actions, protests by unemployed workers have rocked the country from north to south.

The CGT has called a 36-hour national general strike for March 1–2 to oppose the government's austerity measures, which also include a freeze on federal funding for the impoverished provinces, tax cuts to wealthy businessmen, a raise in the retirement age for women from 60 to 65 years, gutting the union-run health-care system, and an end to industry-wide collective bargaining. The federation is also demanding the government provide unemployment benefits; most jobless workers in Argentina do not receive unemployment insurance.

On December 29 de la Rúa signed decrees, previously approved by Congress, enacting the measures to dismantle the state-run retirement pension system and undermine the health-care system through competition by private companies. These moves are an assault on broad social gains won by working people in this South American nation following World War II.

Workers in Argentina have been handicapped by the union officials' long-standing subordination to the bourgeois Peronist party since it was founded during World War II by bourgeois nationalist figure Juan Perón. De la Rúa's predecessor, Peronist Carlos Menem, presided over the sell-off of most state-owned industries, which resulted in mass layoffs. Since the Menem regime, the Argentine peso has been officially tied to the U.S. dollar, which has resulted in high prices and the devastation of workers' living standards.  
 
IMF-dictated austerity program
The austerity moves, initiated by the Menem administration and now enacted by de la Rúa, had long been demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions that represent the interests of Washington and the most powerful imperialist investors.

The day before the union action in Buenos Aires, the IMF announced a package of loans and credits to the Argentine government totaling almost $40 billion--double what had previously been expected. The World Bank, IMF, Spanish government, and a number of private banks inside and outside Argentina have committed funds or lines of credit to the package.

This amounted to the largest such "rescue" effort since the IMF loaned $41 billion to prop up the Brazilian economy in 1998, a measure undertaken in the wake of the financial and currency crisis that swept Asia and sent shock waves through several of the major Latin American nations.

The loans reflected concern among international capitalist investors that Argentina has been close to defaulting on payments of its foreign debt, which stands at $123 billion--an amount equal to half the country's gross domestic product. The IMF package will be used to cover interest payments due this year of more than $14 billion.

Battered by weak economic growth and exports, the Argentine government has borrowed heavily in a struggle to maintain the one-to-one parity of the peso with the U.S. dollar established in 1991. Argentina is now the most indebted country in Latin America.

The country's economy, the third-largest in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico, has declined in relation to its major semicolonial competitors on the continent, shrinking by 3.2 percent in 1999. Growth for last year was virtually zero. A downturn in the U.S. economy could have big repercussions in Argentina as well as throughout the continent.

Despite the sweeping character of the austerity measures, some spokespeople for financial capital have expressed impatience that the assault on working people is not deep enough. Some have argued that the IMF loans "protect" the Argentine government from undertaking the level of cutbacks in social spending deemed necessary by the imperialist powers.

In a December 22 column entitled "Who Will Heal Argentina? Please Don't Answer, 'the IMF,' Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the editor of the Americas column of the Wall Street Journal, laid out a harsh prescription for Argentina, which she claimed was marked by "a half-century of socialist redistribution." "Monetary stability," she wrote, "is incompatible with protected markets, inflexible labor laws, high and ubiquitous taxes, broad entitlements, and a generous system of transfers to the provinces."

Claiming that past IMF loans have allowed "more wiggle room to delay reform," O'Grady quoted a local businessman who "says there is only one way out: 'You have to starve the bastards.'"

O'Grady said the government had to take the "political risk" involved in such "economic reform." She was referring to the prospect of growing working-class protests as the de la Rúa government tries to push ahead with the austerity program.  
 
Near-daily protests
Concern about the social volatility in Argentina is evident in the tone of coverage in the big-business media. "Economic problems, including 15 percent unemployment, have brought near-daily protests, including blockades of key highways by jobless workers," the Associated Press reported December 19.

Protests by unemployed workers and social explosions have taken place in provinces throughout Argentina. Many are areas devastated by the mass layoffs that followed the privatization of the oil and other state-owned industries, as well as economically depressed agricultural regions.

In Neuquén province, for example, unemployed workers blocked highways in late December, demanding government aid to be able to buy food for the Christmas holidays. The police responded with billy clubs and tear gas, arresting 45 adults and 11 children. The local branch of the CTA organized a protest rally December 21 to condemn the repression. In a related protest, workers blocked a bridge connecting the provinces of Neuquén and Río Negro for several days, until the government agreed to pay back wages and reopen a clinic it had closed.

In La Matanza, in Buenos Aires province, more than 1,000 unemployed and retired workers demonstrated December 23 in front of several supermarkets, chanting "Bread and Jobs" and "Food for our tables at Christmas." Despite a heavy cop presence, they eventually forced the owners to donate several thousands of kilos of food. They threatened to hold a similar protest in front of the local Wal-Mart.  
 
La Tablada sentences commuted
In a victory for working people, 11 political prisoners in Buenos Aires, convicted for a 1989 attack on the La Tablada army barracks, won a reduction in their sentences December 29. The prisoners, members of the All for the Fatherland Movement (MTP), had been on a hunger strike for 116 days to demand their freedom. Their sentences were reduced from life to between 20 and 25 years. Those with a 20-year sentence will be eligible to be considered for parole in 2002, said the justice minister in announcing the decision. Until a week earlier, the government had refused all appeals by the prisoners.

Two of the MTP prisoners, however, were excluded from the commutations of sentences. These are Enrique Gorriarán Merlo and Ana María Sivori. Gorriarán was a former leader of the Revolutionary People's Army (ERP), a guerrilla group active in the 1970s and '80s.  
 
 
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