Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores in the FIT-U, originally published on https://lis-isl.org/
The DNU 340/2025 launched by Milei’s government is not limited to advancing in the dismantling of the Merchant Marine, deregulating labor regulations and allowing the incorporation of foreign vessels to the river cabotage transport, bipayas reforms that we repudiate. In addition, it puts through the window in its article 3[1] the curtailment of the right to strike in almost all public and private labor activities. Using the same arguments as the DNU 70/2023, declared unconstitutional, it tries again to apply part of the labor reform demanded by the IMF and the bosses and that the crisis and the workers’ resistance prevented it from applying.
As from this decree, certain activities are considered essential services[2] and force their workers to increase the coverage, in the event of a union conflict, to 75% of the normal provision. On the other hand, activities considered to be of transcendental importance[3], have to guarantee a floor of 50% of benefits. With this novelty, the right to strike is curtailed in practically all areas of industry and services, both in the public and private sectors. It is the fundamental of the rights won by the working class and, at the same time, the main method to defend the working conditions achieved after more than a century of struggle.
With the euphemisms of “essential” and “transcendental” Milei seeks to muzzle workers in order to increase labor exploitation, pushing the current precarious conditions towards semi-slavery. In his speech he deceitfully claims that the limitation of the right to strike will guarantee the functioning of areas with great sensitivity among the population, such as health, education, transportation, food production, among many others; on the contrary, it is his chainsaw plan -with thousands of layoffs, budgetary suffocation and recession- the greatest impediment to the normal functioning of these areas.
From the pro-government media it is proposed to separate registered workers from self-employed, informal and digital platform workers, reediting the lying discourse that the right to strike would be a privilege of the few and that it is an outdated tool in the face of the changes introduced by the new technologies in the labor market. They are lying! The right to strike is a right of the entire working class, whether their work is in establishments or remote, by applications or whatever; and that no innovation in the labor market has eliminated the contradiction that tears this society apart, the contradiction of interests between workers and employers. We call on this young precarious working class to unite in defense of the right to strike and to recover the future that Milei and the bosses want to take away from them.
At the same time, we reject the proposals of “new statehood” that are being agitated by the pejotista opposition, which when they were in government, advanced in several regulations of this right. This policy does not serve to confront the nefarious decree of Milei.
Similar to DNU 70/23 and the Ley Bases, this Decree seeks a total reset of production relations, a real leap in authoritarianism and regimentation in the work environments. By means of the suppression of the capacity of collective bargaining, it intends to atomize the responses and the power of the labor force. And, like that DNU, this one is unconstitutional, violating Article 14 bis of the National Constitution, achieved after a century of workers’ and popular struggles. Furthermore, it questions the Labor Contract Law and the International Conventions of constitutional rank. This was stated by the workers of the Garrahan Hospital in the amparo appeal filed by the APyT.
The implementation via a decree ratifies the course set by Milei to govern believing he is a monarch. The biggest adjustment in the world, as Milei himself says, together with the package of structural reforms that the Monetary Fund demands to implement with its new program, needs this authoritarian profile, and requires to subdue workers as much as possible.
At the beginning of his administration, the government had already tried to implement a labor reform by means of the aforementioned decree 70/23. The mobilization of all labor sectors was the key to get it declared unconstitutional. Today the direction to follow must be the same. In the face of this ferocious attack, the general strike is necessary, we need a strong plan of struggle with continuity.
In the face of such a threat, the central workers’ organizations should already be calling for a general strike and a plan of struggle, in order to stop this move of the libertarian government. But the CGT and the CTAs announce that for now they will only act in the courts, without calling for strikes or mobilizations. We warn that no institutional path will work if it is not with the development of social mobilization, that which the bureaucratic leaderships resist so much. That is why all workplaces demand a general strike and we will have to take in our hands its impulse.
Contrary to the sentiment of the rank and file, the leader of the CGT Héctor Daer continues with the same logic in all this time of libertarian government: he met with the Chief of Cabinet Guillermo Francos to start the first negotiations in the face of the new decree and declared that “he does not see an atmosphere of general strike”. Not only is there an atmosphere of strike, but there are important rebellions, Tierra del Fuego shows that we must unite all the struggles and radicalize our ways of claiming. Last week the teachers in the Province of Buenos Aires showed their will and “strike atmosphere”. This is also shown by the UTA drivers and retirees every Wednesday. And the Garrahan Hospital, which is going out to fight against the emptying. Therefore, in the face of these measures of the government, what is lacking is not a “strike atmosphere”, but rather that the central organizations break with their complicity and passivity and call for a stoppage. As demonstrated by these seventeen months under Milei, when we achieved massiveness in the streets, we put a stop to it and managed to make it back down.
We have to stop the liberfacho government. And, instead of confronting it, the leaders of the CGT openly compromise with it; and those of the CTA do not go beyond speeches or some isolated and partial measure. Neither one nor the other gave continuity to the national strikes that we managed to start from below. For that reason, while we demand once again that they call for a national strike and a plan of struggle to achieve the annulment of this reactionary decree and the whole adjustment, we have to prepare it from the rank and file. While we fight for new leaders in the unions, to get rid of this scum of parasites and to set up a new democratic central and for the struggle, we have to go out to prepare and demand assemblies, plenaries and meetings of activists, whatever we can in each place and union, to organize the struggle in defense of the right to strike, for wages and against the austerity measures.
The struggle of the drivers, of Garrahan, of Tierra del Fuego, the teachers of Catamarca, among others, show us the way. We need the greatest unity of action in the streets to set in motion a process of mobilization and a plan of struggle to put an end to this anti-worker, tightening and repressive government, where the road map is printed by the IMF.
After several months without control of the streets and hit by massive mobilizations, Milei tries to retake the political initiative by exaggerating his victory with 30% of the votes of Adorni and LLA, sinking the PRO in the elections of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. But it is necessary to say that these elections, as well as other anticipated elections in the provinces, had phenomena that are not evaluated by the government in its adulation. The abstention was very high, reflecting the general boredom with the political regime and the non-identification with any electoral proposal. With this scenario, the libertarian government managed to capitalize only 15% of the CABA electoral roll, a very modest support taking into account that the City elections were nationalized, and that the violet project was endorsed. That is why Milei’s exaggeration in this regard, or the current stability in economic matters, cannot confuse us: the political course of the government has a relative acceptance, that is why fighting and confronting it in the streets is a possible way to twist the arm of this ultra-right.
From the MST in the Frente de Izquierda Unidad, we call for the broadest unity of action to defeat this new provocation and throw out Milei and his government. We call for assemblies and plenary meetings in all workplaces. To demand the General Strike and the plan of struggle from the central organizations, and to organize from below to impose massive mobilizations and the general strike. In parallel, towards the left and anti-bureaucratic activism, we raise again the debate on the need to build a massive and socialist political alternative, that in format and audacity surpasses the electoral expressions and imposes on itself the challenge of winning tens of thousands for the perspective of a government of the workers and the people.
Ednnotes
[1] Amends the chapter on Collective Labor Disputes of Law 25877.
[2] This category includes health and hospital services, as well as the transport and distribution of medicines and hospital supplies and pharmaceutical services; the production, transport and distribution and marketing of drinking water, gas and other fuels and electric power; telecommunications services, including Internet and satellite communications; commercial aeronautics and air and port traffic control; including beaconing, dredging, mooring, stowage, unstowage, towing of vessels and all port services; customs and immigration services, and other services related to foreign trade; child care and education at nursery, preschool, primary and secondary levels, as well as special education; and maritime and river transportation of persons and/or merchandise and/or cargo, related services and offshore operations, through the different means used for such purpose.
[3] This category includes: the production of medicines and/or hospital supplies; land and subway transportation of people and/or goods through the different means used for such purpose; radio and television services; continuous industrial activities, including iron and steel and aluminum production, chemical activity and cement activity; the food industry in all its value chain; the production and distribution of construction materials, aircraft and ship repair services, all airport services, logistic services, mining activity, refrigeration activity, post office, distribution and commercialization of food and beverages, agricultural activity and its value chain; banking, financial, hotel and gastronomic services and electronic commerce; and the production of goods and/or services of any activity that were affected to export commitments.