Our country is going through a month of June full of union mobilizations and strikes in different labor sectors that demand salary improvements, among other demands, with an eye on the rendering of accounts that the Government of Luis Lacalle Pou must deliver before the 30th.
As reported by the Efe agency, a general strike “in defense of quality work and salary” called for July 7 in sight, the unions that make up the Uruguayan trade union center, PIT-CNT, began this June to make heard your claims at a key moment.
Meanwhile, the coalition government is working to present a new Accountability bill, in which the Administration reviews the budget allocations of the last year and adjusts some, if deemed necessary.
moved weeks
In the streets the atmosphere will be “lively”, the president of the Federation of Public Health Officials (FFSP), Martín Pereira, assured the Efe Agency, who remarks that the list of workers called to paralyze activities is long and covers both public as private.
To the strikes of transport and industry carried out on June 6 and 9, for example, one of state officials joined last Thursday16, with the express support of private individuals in the health sector, and another of construction workers , on the 29th.
The most recent was the strike in education, last Wednesday, which, explains the general secretary of the PIT-CNT and a reference for the FUM teachers’ federation, Elbia Pereira, responds to a significant loss of salary in the sector.
“For two years now, officials from the different sectors of education have been losing purchasing power according to our salaries,” he argues and points out that, although the Government “recognizes” the situation, “unfortunately” it has not put the matter “on the table” with a view to accountability.
While denouncing that education deals with overcrowded classrooms in the face of a cut of two million dollars, Pereira claims that the one taken by the authorities “is not the way” and stresses that on the day of the strike there will be a “great march.”
Along the same lines, the president of the FFSP points out that health workers, applauded in the hardest months of the pandemic, will march for job improvements and says he expects massive support “from the citizens themselves”, since this also concerns him. . Likewise, he hopes that the Government will react and provide some response to the workers. “We are talking about the workers (…) who in the midst of the pandemic and the crisis banked (maintained) all the services, so we are convinced that, after the great mobilizations, the Government is going to have to listen and change its position », he underlines.
Union career – politics
Half a month before the deadline for the authorities to deliver their proposal to the Uruguayan Parliament, the uncertainty exceeds the forecasts, since, for the economist Gabriela Mordecki, the complex inflationary panorama can play a key role. It is that, she says, although the Government announced “an advance in the recovery of public salaries and pensions”, it is not known if it will later impose a discount that implies a “much smaller” salary recovery.
On the other hand, the director of the Institute of Economics of the Faculty of Economic Sciences and Administration of the University of the Republic welcomes the “large numbers” of public accounts.
As the Executive met its fiscal deficit goal, for Mordecki the unknown is whether he will bet, as in previous years, on “zero spending” or, already with the Coronavirus Fund of some 700 million scheduled from the pandemic off the table, it will enable greater spending in sensitive areas, such as education.
From another point of view, the political scientist Antonio Cardarello sees the opposition, whose main force is the Broad Front (FA, left), which governed Uruguay between 2005 and 2020 and today is chaired by the former leader of the PIT-CNT Fernando Pereira, in a field fertile to assert its weight, as a key ally of the trade union movements.
According to Cardarello, the FA “historically” knew how to use economic issues as the center of the debate and, after a difficult start after its 2019 electoral defeat, it reaches 2022 “reinforced” in its character as an opposition force, so it can take advantage of the moment in your favor.
On the other hand, for the academic, the Government is clear about “its roadmap” and remains “attentive” to political changes in a scenario in which it must “give a certain response” to the mobilized workers if it wants this to result in the long run in “electoral odds that can improve” in the race towards the 2024 presidential elections
Regardless of how useful and we can say vital that the trade union tool means and that through the unions the vast majority of labor rights that we know today have been achieved, the succession of excessive strikes and trade union measures can be counterproductive, and truly harmful as we have seen in Argentina…therefore a fine and delicate balance must be managed between pursuing what is just and not falling into repetition. Nor does it leave a good image when trade unionism uses the union struggle as a political springboard. Those borders, a disservice they do to the union image or at least of the unionists.
Juan Prandi
