As expected, the second year of Llaryora's government began with
significant public sector adjustment policies. Fully under the influenceof the blender and the chainsaw-like power of Milei, the Córdoba
government took advantage of the situation to push forward with a new
attempt to privatize the Córdoba Provincial Energy Company. Along the
same lines, we see a surge in the defunding of public health and
education, with poverty wages, job insecurity, and infrastructure
problems, among other issues. To these adjustment policies, we must add
the sharp increase in property and vehicle taxes, which severely impacts
salaried workers and the most impoverished sectors. This fiscal policy,
following the sacred principle of fiscal balance espoused by both the
national and provincial governments, is inconsistent with the lack of
public works and the appalling conditions of public services throughout
the province.
The historic Luz y Fuerza union, which was instrumental in the most
glorious milestones in the history of the labor movement in Córdoba,
still retains the reflection of the immediate response to these attacks.
The Llaryora government, shielded by DNU 70/2023 of the national
government, is promoting a new attempt to transform EPEC into a
corporation for privatization. This generated a swift and coordinated
response from various union, political, and social sectors, launching a
new plan to fight privatization. This coordination was reflected in the
massive mobilization on February 27, which brought together health,
education, state, and municipal unions, private sector workers, members
of the CGT and CTA, and student and neighborhood groups. Undoubtedly, a
path of coordinated struggle among a broad spectrum of grassroots
organizations is the only way to stop the privatization attempt.
This important mobilization converged with the demands of health
workers, who are experiencing brutal exploitation with wages far below
the basic food basket, with substantial deductions to finance the
bankruptcy of APROSS, a social security system that does not offer even
minimal coverage to its members. Another strong demand is the situation
of thousands of precarious workers with junk contracts, self-employed
workers, and interns, coupled with the appalling infrastructure
conditions that are causing the collapse of public health.
The collective bargaining negotiations in the teaching sector also
represented a conflict for the government. With the anger of workers
facing extremely precarious conditions in schools, supporting children
and young people who have been suffering the vicissitudes of the crisis
and living in conditions of total exploitation with poverty wages and
proposals that are simply unheard of due to their squalor, it was to be
expected that this would not be an easy chapter for the government. In
any case, the maneuvers of the Provincial UEPC leadership to prevent the
conflict from escalating achieved their goal. Once again, the sector led
by Cristalli signed a miserable agreement with Llaryora, against the
will of the majority of Córdoba's teachers, shielded by fraudulent
maneuvers in the most remote departments of the city and by the unfair
representation that their sector enjoys in the union's assembly of
departmental delegates.
Adding to this situation is the grassroots organizing process being
carried out by judicial workers, who are also suffering from salary cuts
and the worsening precarious hiring conditions. The process driven by
self-organized workers, overcoming the immobility of the leadership of a
union also co-opted by the union bureaucracy, demonstrates the capacity
for mobilization and the anger among public sector workers, which was
reflected in the protests against the governor at the opening of the
judicial year in the Supreme Court of Justice.
The role of the leadership of the SEP and the UEPC Provincial, and other
union leaders aligned with Peronism, is understandable given their
partisan interests. The severe bureaucratization and lack of class
independence of these leaders lead them to "protect" a government that
supposedly opposes Milei. Here lies the paradox: there is not a single
policy by Llaryora that runs counter to what the national government
proposes.
There is not a single real action by the Córdoba Peronist movement that
questions Milei's ultra-liberal and anti-popular policies. The most
pro-government opponents. Once again, the Cordobanist line hides behind
a claim of "independence" the subservience of Buenos Aires' neoliberal,
adjustmentist, and anti-popular interests. Therefore, not a single
respite for Llaryora.
If we look at the hollowing out of various areas of the public sector in
recent decades-understanding the public sector as the common good, the
infrastructure and services that guarantee the development of society-we
can infer that the state management model, at the hands of governments
and officials in power, has been deteriorating these sectors. We can
infer that this is partly due to an inability to manage, a failure to
understand and interpret the real needs of society. Politicians in
charge of public health policies rarely receive care at the Misericordia
Hospital, and the Minister of Education clearly does not sit in front of
a classroom in any school in Córdoba. But beyond this factor, the
policies of hollowing out the public sector are based on the backdrop of
the neoliberal project that seeks the gradual privatization of more and
more areas of the public sector, that is, placing the management of
health, education, energy, roads, etc., in the hands of private
companies. This project is the one currently under dispute. The
exacerbated commodification of all aspects of life is the premise
driving Milei's government.
We are seeing how the precipitation of this inhumane and atrocious
turbo-capitalism is destroying the living conditions of the working
class, plunging us into misery and exploitation. We cannot expect
anything good from our health, education, and so on being managed
through the interests of businessmen and financial speculators.
So, if the state apparatus of those at the top, with its political caste
at the mercy of the interests of the business and financial caste, is
incapable of managing the various areas of public life for the people,
and clearly, private companies with interests in profiting themselves
will exclude the working class from access to these rights and services,
how can public life be managed?
We understand that it is time to begin discussing these issues in depth.
Neither should the public be in the hands of the state and governments,
nor should the public be in the hands of private individuals. It's time
to talk about the management of public services by the workers who
sustain these different areas and services day after day, together with
their users.
Who better to organize, develop, and manage public health than the
workers who sustain this activity day after day, together with their
users, and the same with education. Clearly, this is a long road ahead,
in which the role of unions is fundamental. Unions must be reestablished
under leadership at the service of governments and employers so that
they can be a genuine tool for worker organization and struggle. These
unions must play a key role in the management of public services,
removing the political, corporate, and financial elite from the mix.
Having raised this concern, we see the urgency of the conflicts in the
streets, which, while currently limited by sectors, could slow
government policies. In this context, it is necessary to build bridges
between the various union groups, guilds, and social organizations,
enabling them to develop their own agenda, from the grassroots and
independent of class, that does not respond to the traditional
institutional methods and timing of the government and political parties.
In these times of individualism and fragmentation, it is necessary to
return to the daily task of meeting with our neighbors, colleagues, and
classmates to build a dialogue between the different realities that
affect us, strengthening the construction and participation in
grassroots spaces. We need to build collective power among the popular
sectors, where the people are the protagonists and take the resolutions
of the issues that affect us into their own hands.
This system of misery and exploitation has nothing good to offer those
at the bottom; we suffer it daily. It is time to deepen the organization
of the oppressed classes to put an end to the life to which those at the
top subject us, for a society without oppressors or oppressed, for
socialism in freedom.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1046258937531953&set=a.306492611508593
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten