Argentina on Monday ground to a halt as public service unions blocked road, rail and air transport with a nationwide 24-hour strike in protest at the government’s latest deal with the IMF.
In a massive show of force against the center-right government of Argentine President Mauricio Macri, organizers said at least 1 million workers were taking part in the industrial action which halted trains, subways, buses and flights in Latin America’s third-largest economy.
“The strike had a very high level of compliance throughout the country,” General Confederation of Workers (CGT) leader Juan Carlos Schmid told a news conference.
Photo: EPA
Banks and schools remained shut, and Buenos Aires slowly emptied of traffic as the day progressed.
“These stoppages don’t help at all, they don’t add anything, and I don’t think that there has been a government in decades that cared as much about employment and the workers, and creating new opportunities,” said Macri, a former mayor of the capital.
Although the CGT called only for a strike, more radical groups organized demonstrations that cut off access to Buenos Aires.
From 7am, activists began to close off the main routes into the capital where hundreds of federal law enforcement personnel were deployed.
“The strike is against the economic program... The IMF has always brought hardship to Argentines,” Schmid said earlier, calling the strike “the biggest in eight years.”
The unions are demanding that salary negotiations for this year are reopened to align them with projected inflation, calculated at 27 percent by the central bank, and which could rise to 30 percent by the end of the year.
Negotiations mostly took place at the start of the year, when the annual inflation target was 15 percent — a goal which had been abandoned by last month.
In the interest of maintaining dialogue with the unions, Argentine Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Security Jorge Triaca Jr said his office was in favor of such negotiations.
Following a currency crisis in April and last month in which the peso shed about 30 percent of its value, the IMF announced a US$50 billion standby loan for Argentina earlier this month after Macri sought help to bolster market confidence.
Argentina has a bitter history with the IMF, which many Argentines view as having imposed tough conditions that worsened economic pain 17 years ago.
As the strike gripped Buenos Aires, only a few cars could be seen on the city streets, which were quieter than on a Sunday.
“A general strike isn’t enough. We need a battle plan to counter this war plan against workers,” Workers Party leader Marcelo Ramal said at one of the roadblocks.
The Argentine Ministry of Finance estimated the strike would cost the economy US$1 billion.
“The government is in a tough spot, it is at its very lowest point [in the polls] and is strongly criticized by workers” whose wages are losing value against the high rate of inflation, political analyst Diego Reynoso said.
Macri came to power in 2015 after 12 years of leftist rule by late Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, who held office from 2003 to 2007, and then his wife, Cristina Fernandez, who was president from 2007 until late 2015.
Macri, a free-market businessman who once ran one of the nation’s top soccer clubs, scrapped many subsidies his predecessors had granted on a variety of services, most notably electricity, gas and water.
The rise in the cost of utilities, as well as public transport, further eroded the spending power of Argentines.
The government’s deal with the IMF aims to balance the budget by 2020.
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