The reduction of the Argentine State promoted by President Javier Milei is advancing by leaps and bounds. Between December and May, 25,200 employees stopped working for the national administration and public companies and organisations, and the figure is already approaching 30,000 with the new wave of layoffs carried out in recent days. The state workers’ union ATE counted the non-renewal of 2,300 contracts as of 30 June, but believes that the total figure could be close to 5,000. The Government welcomes the layoffs in some areas that it considers unnecessary; for the unions it means dismantling important public policies due to lack of personnel and under-execution of the budget.
Most ministries have been affected, but the most drastic cuts have been in the former Women, Gender and Diversity portfolio. “Of the total of 1,100 employees we found on December 10, 85% have already been eliminated,” confirmed presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni at a press conference on Monday. “240 employees were eliminated in the first stage.” [31 de marzo] and 685 in the second stage. Under this Administration there is no room for superfluous expenditure with taxpayers’ money,” he stressed.
Some gender policies have been completely halted, while other programmes have been reduced to a minimum. Among the latter is the 144 telephone line for assistance to victims of gender violence, which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or the Acompañar programme, which offered financial assistance so that women without resources could leave the home they shared with their abuser. “On line 144 there were shifts with only two workers, the Acompañar programme was left with less than 50%,” warns ATE delegate Nani Smith.
Several civil organizations have denounced the Executive Branch before the courts for failure to comply with its international gender obligations and demand a precautionary measure to suspend the dismissals.
The areas of human rights, social development and health are also among those with the highest number of layoffs. “The Government is carrying out massive layoffs that represent a direct attack on policies to assist the most vulnerable population at a time when poverty and destitution have increased,” criticises the general secretary of ATE in social development, Ingrid Manfred. “It is a very critical situation to which is added the total paralysis of public policies, with practically zero budget execution and the decision to suspend the delivery of food and medicines,” she adds.
Precarious work in the State
The layoffs carried out by Milei’s government have exposed the precarious working conditions of the Argentine national administration. Of its nearly 230,000 workers, almost a third had annual contracts, which became quarterly when the ultra-right leader came to power. The decision not to renew them means firing them without compensation or unemployment benefit in a context of severe economic crisis and job losses. In the first quarter of the year, unemployment rose two points to 7.7%according to the latest official data, and the number has continued to rise since then.
The official line is that the dismissed staff were performing redundant or dispensable tasks or were failing to fulfil their job obligations. State employees, on the other hand, point out that in many cases they are performing a role that the private sector cannot assume and believe that the Government’s objective is to discredit everything public by emptying it of staff and defunding it. “What was working well, they want to make it work poorly, like public universities. And what was already working more or less, they want to close it permanently,” says a former employee of the Ministry of Health.
The state of public health in Argentina was already delicate, but in the last six months it has worsened even more due to the general fall in salaries and the reduction of resources. Among the 86 workers fired on June 30 from the Posadas hospital, a reference medical center for the province of Buenos Aires, there are endocrinologists, molecular biologists, those in charge of detecting leukemia, nephrologists and emergency physicians, according to Luis Sucher, CICOP delegate at Posadas. “They have weakened the quality of care at the hospital, which is facing an enormous demand,” Sucher told local media about this medical center that has an area of influence of some six million people. “This government understands health only if it makes a profit, but it is a fundamental human right,” he denounced.
Few areas have escaped the pruning and it is not even a lifeline to integrate the State’s permanent staff. Psychologist Daniela Gasparini denounced through social networks that She was “fired for political discrimination” After 13 years of uninterrupted work against human trafficking in the National Program for the Rescue and Support of People Affected by the Crime of Trafficking” dependent on the Ministry of Justice. Gasparini attributes her dismissal to her political activism as general secretary of Libres del Sur. For the unions, it has a disciplinary objective, that is, to discourage other workers from becoming involved in political or social organizations under penalty of losing their jobs.
His case became known in the midst of the search for Loan Danilo Peña, a five-year-old boy who disappeared three weeks ago in the north of the country and who is suspected of being a victim of a trafficking network. In a telephone conversation, Gasparini says that in recent years he has been in charge of the training and prevention area, key to detecting this crime through awareness in schools, hospitals, security forces and personnel from the judicial and political power. “Argentina has always been at the forefront in terms of legislation on human trafficking. I have given training to people from other countries, imagine the importance of them coming to see what we were doing against this global crime, which is one of the most profitable businesses in the world along with drug trafficking,” he says before lamenting the current setback. “It was already operating with less human capacity than needed, something that is the responsibility of previous administrations. But if you also cut back further, it is very difficult for this public policy to be effective,” he warns.
The layoffs extend to almost all of the state’s companies and public bodies, which number around 100. Milei ordered the closure of the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI) in February, and the following month the closure of the Télam news agency, where 700 people worked. The Institute for Family, Peasant and Indigenous Agriculture and the National Council for Family Agriculture, which had 900 employees, have followed the same path. In this latest round of layoffs, the most affected was the National Institute of Industrial Technology, which lost more than 200 employees in one fell swoop.
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