July 14, 2022
“we will defeat the adjustment”
Early today thousands of workers and unemployed concentrated in different parts of Buenos Aires followed by a massive march to the Plaza de Mayo and to the centers of political power. According to the Piquetera Unity movement, the umbrella organization that planned today’s events, this was just the first day of a new “plan of struggle”.
The focus of the demands that are agreed upon by many organizations is calling to end the so called adjustment which has been made by the government to squeeze the most vulnerable sectors of the population to be able to make the austere payments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It should be remembered that at the end of the administration of Mauricio Macri, he signed a $46 billion dollar loan from the IMF,that will keep Argentina in debt for generations.
The demands of Piquetera Unity are demanding an immediate solution for the hardest hit sectors, with a $20,000 (Argentine peso) bonus, a minimum wage above the basic basket of $100,000 and universal insurance for the unemployed equal to the minimum wage. This would include the unemployed and those that work in the unrecognized informal economy, from those who sell card board for a living to families of the unemployed and retired people.
One of the leaders of the demonstration Eduardo Belliboni, said at the rally that the government was dragging its feet to meet with them. “ We were told by the Minister of the Economy, Silvina Batakis, Belliboni that “next week” they would be received by “someone from the Secretariat of Institutional Relations, as if this were a minor problem”.
One plan is that the next step would be more protests, including the blocking of roads next Wednesday, within the framework of a plan to demand the Universal Basic Wage and an emergency increase for the workers.