WORLD WORLDWIDE ARGENTINA News Journal Update - (en) Argentina, FORA, Organizacion-Obrera #101: UNIONS, PUBLIC MEDIA WORKERS IN A STATE OF ALERT (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The workers of the Public Media are in a state of alert, due to the

situation that the current government tries to impose by dint of decrees
and draft laws, which do nothing but undermine the precarious existence
of many workers, and in greater measure to those who are under contracts
confined to aggravated exploitation conditions. ---- For this reason, it
is necessary to emphasize that everything issued in labor matters and on
the execution of companies under state administration would lead to a
higher extreme than that precariousness, bordering on returning to a
state of slavery or reduction to servitude.

The fraudulent types that the National State establishes are those of
contract employees (monotributistas) and temporary employees. Contracted
employees are in the most fragile link of the chain because they do not
receive any contribution or specific hours, and are subject to
non-renewal or termination of their contracts. Hopefully, these
contracts are renewed annually, but it can take up to months (as happens
during the summer) that the colleagues do not receive any income during
that period, working for free, until their situation is "resolved."

In addition to being paid less, they are the ones who are currently
being fired, due to the action or omission of not wanting to renew
contracts yet, or the companies not addressing their situation.
Something similar, but in a forceful way, was when the Cambiemos
government barely took office in the National Executive, firing those
hired who had been in that modality for years (many reaching a decade
under that figure).

On the other hand, temporary workers do not enjoy greater day-to-day
"benefits" (or rather rights) other than receiving social contributions
and earning a little more than those hired. For both of them, if they
don't work, because they get sick, or because the same company doesn't
call them, they don't get paid. For this reason, several times, the
salary is undermined, reaching half or zero in value, whether or not
there is an explanation (e.g. due to operational issues, time
availability, etc.). Where there is, it is an excuse without any type of
logic, which demonstrates the extent of going against the livelihood of
workers and going against both labor laws, communication laws and the
service itself. A plain and simple emptying, which has been practiced
systematically in recent years, and which serves as an excuse for the
new administration by passing us by and leaving the population without
Public Media and the workers without jobs. Reason and relationship of
utmost importance.

It is worth highlighting the work of media such as Public Radio, which
during the pandemic has been an essential link in the transmission of
knowledge in various parts of the country, as mandatory basic education
was affected in places where there was no direct internet connectivity
or, As also happened, the case of families that only had a telephone or
device to access the network, leaving the other school-age members
without options.

Another important point, and not a minor one, is that Public Media have
a social role of vital value in rural areas or long distances with
terrain that is difficult to navigate. That is why the call or
notification to the resident must be highlighted, where not even the
telephone lines can work, to communicate any emergency, the status of
routes and roads; the call to the harvest or the call for port workers,
demonstrating its fundamental, if not basic, function of the economy of
workers in areas of greater complexity to work and function. It remains
to clarify the vaccination campaigns, awareness raising in the case of
the mosquito that transmits Dengue, Equine Encephalitis and many other
essential information for the care and well-being of the population as a
whole.

Before closing this example of the current situation and the role played
by Public Media, it is important to highlight that a public service does
not have to be administered exclusively by the State, or be its only
beneficiary. The character or definition that something is public is due
to its broad and unlimited access, which can be administered by the same
society that provides and receives it. Where also, NGOs and/or private
companies have been organizers of said goods or services.  In history we
find cases of public services or goods promoted by workers without
requesting protection from governments or companies (when, generally,
they were left aside by these sectors, as they did not represent
economic or political returns). Thus, currently, we confuse the
much-mentioned "absence of the State" with the lack of civil
organization and mobilization to guarantee certain rights, maintaining a
fallacy that the State is the same as society.

For this reason, it is necessary to highlight that destroying this
communication network is an attack, mainly, against the working people
as a whole, both those who receive the information and entertainment, as
well as those of us who do the work from the most sincere effort,
despite many obstacles that we receive, because we trust that
information, knowledge, or, in a word, Culture, cannot and should not be
appropriated by businessmen or politicians in power. It is something
that for them is incommensurable and even contrary.

The bill currently submitted curtails all labor rights, reaching the
plant workers themselves and reduces everyone equally (with Contracted
and temporary workers) to semi-slavery without any guarantee of
continuity of work and daily sustenance. Much less compensation. For
this reason, we salute the gestures of the conscious and mobilized
population in this context of attack (discursive and even physical) to
those of us who depend on our work, and others in the same condition
also depend. It is an offense to the group of workers who are the ones
who create and maintain the livelihood, along with the wealth, of this
world. Now, more than ever, is when we must expand the bonds of
solidarity, provided in the ways that our ingenuity helps us through
this adversity that the always powerful want to make us pay.

HEALTH, STRENGTH AND RESISTANCE!

https://organizacion-obrera.fora.com.ar/2024/01/08/trabajadores-de-los-medios-publicos-en-estado-de-alerta/
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