Strike me down

The municipal public employees are on strike since yesterday, and for the nth time, asking for a raise. I've been wanting to see a photo exhibition at the Museo de la Ciudad, but since it's run by those very municipal employees, it's impossible. Last week on Tuesday I went to the museum, and only after ten minutes of looking around did I remember the employees were on strike. It wasn't a waste, because the museum is after all within a beautiful park and I was accompanied by a beautiful lady, but the exhibition (which I'm told is large and very good) remains unseen to me.

I don't know what the municipal employees are trying to do here. I understand that prices have gone up and the Christmas/New Year season brings even more expenses than usual, but everyone in the government offices has half their things packed for vacations already, and they're going to get a customary "adjustment" salary raise first thing next year.

On the other hand, I don't get why (besides tradition) government offices have to change at this time of the year. Nobody wants to dress up and hear long speeches, everyone wants to leave town and flee the scorching summer for the beach or the mountains, and no-one wants to start anything that demands work. The general consensus at my workplace is that the heavy restructuring that governor Hermes Binner will surely effect on the provincial public administration will not begin until March, which means four lost months just because the office-taking was done in December.

Binner will face troubles soon too, since now that there's a Rosario Socialist in the Grey House (the government seat, in Santa Fe City) and many Rosarinos will be moving there from the municipal administration to become provincial officials, information and gossip will travel faster, and already the news is that (as everyone suspected) the municipal employees of Rosario are much better paid than us, their counterparts in the province, and much better treated. One of the subtly stated campaign devices of Binner's was that he could do for the province what he had done for Rosario, which everyone agrees has turned into a much nicer city during the past Socialist administrations (Cavallero, twice Binner, and Lifschitz). So we (or our union) will surely be joining the municipal workers in Rosario, asking not only for a raise, but for a raise that brings us closer to them.

And of course, looming above the whole country, there's union leader Hugo Moyano, already facing up to the Presidenta — in fact saying "If you don't give us what we want, we may not continue to be your allies". Cristina K really seems to be more comfortable around industrial moguls and other businessmen than close to Moyano and his vociferously thuggish supporters, who can strike Cristina in both figurative senses of the word, since they de facto command the distribution of goods throughout the country.

And that ends today's political rant. Useless, I know. At the end of it all, I still can't go see my exhibition...

Something smells rotten in Argentina

Just a few quick notes on politics.

Every time you see the Presidenta meeting with industrial moguls and businessmen to reassure them that the next administration will support them, I get this uneasy feeling that this cannot be good for us, the ones who actually work.

Conversely, every time you hear the leaders of industry and finance praising the economic continuity promised by Cristina, I cannot help but think that the power cards have been dealt, the players are already on their places, and, once again, we the people will just be watching from the outside. And serving the drinks.

I also think that, after being a lefty for most of my adult life, the scandalous displays of mob-like behaviour on the part of unions and government will end up turning me into a supporter of typical right-wing police repression. Did you see what happened yesterday before the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires? I mean, except the part where the policeman beat a defenseless demonstrator with a stick, most of the violence came from the union guys, and then they did an incredible show of victimization, as if they'd been Gandhi vs. the British Empire.

When a union leader can decree a strike that will cripple nationwide public transport for a day, without consulting with the workers at all, it's not a good sign. And when a president can call (has to call?) the top union leader to get him to cancel the strike, and everything's "back to normal" in a couple of hours, that's a terrible sign. Realpolitik is messy, but this is just plain wrong.

When a president tolerates a radicalized ecologist group blocking international roads and making ominous threats, and speaks for his country saying "you've backstabbed our people" to the president of a neighbouring friendly country because said country won't put up with our bullying anymore, that's a horrible thing to happen, especially if citizens stay silent.

When the president of your country makes friends with a president that is well on his way to become a dictator for life, and who gladly consorts with a guy who denies the Holocaust, believes Israel should be erased from the map and is producing nuclear weapons, that's not a good thing. One should pick one's friends carefully, because from outside one's always associated with their faults.

Something's very wrong and it seems like no-one here is reacting.

Labour Day

Yesterday (May 1st) was Labour Day in most of the world, except the United States, where commemorating the murder of workers demanding better working conditions is still deemed a bit too Communist, and May 1st seems to be turning into Immigration Day or something.

Here in Argentina, salaries and job quality have jumped to the front of social debate as of late, now that most companies are making tons of money (that's not ironic; they actually are — and they're lying if you hear them claim otherwise), so May 1st is not that different from the rest of the days, except ongoing strikes and demonstrations are suspended so that everybody can relax and resume protesting on May 2nd.

Since the beginning of the impressive macroeconomic recovery, unions and other labour organizations have begun reclaiming the territory lost during the nefarious Neoliberal Era (1989–2001), through negotiation or shows of strength, trying to look good to their constituencies..., no matter that they all sold out to the government when the labour market was deregulated and the hard-won laws protecting workers from virtual slavery were "flexibilized" to please Big Business. The same fat mafia leaders who never protested the right-wing Peronist Carlos Menem's destruction of Perón's legacy of workers' rights are now happily staging impressive, but orderly and quickly subdued protests against their employers with the assent of the left-wing/corporatist Peronist Néstor Kirchner, after which everybody gets together behind closed doors, and moderate pay rises are negotiated.

Other, smaller unions are more combative; they're less capable of creating national disruption (such as paralyzing food transport and supply) but they're also not so easily controlled, since their leaders are not up for sale and they don't adhere to the same partisan codes as the current administration. Of these unions the government demands "caution", and the conservative media depict as irresponsible, troublesome and a danger to the economy. Even worse, they're lumped together with piqueteros and, like them, accused of extorting society to get money (for a sizable proportion of Argentinians, "society" and "the people" include only from the middle class up).

In this view, the problem with blue-collar workers getting a good paycheck is that they may feel encouraged to stand up, demand further rights, and even (God forbid) get to consider themselves as equal to "the people". One immediate effect, according to certain economists (who do know better), is that more money in the hands of the unwashed masses means inflation, as of course these poor ignoramuses cannot understand that they need to save and invest for the good of the country, like responsible citizens. The idea that workers should have money to buy the products they manufacture, pioneered by Henry Ford, seems to have lost its attraction for modern capitalists; and the economists they buy to convey their opinions have made a custom of repeating the lie that higher salaries cause inflation. Higher salaries only redistribute the money — less net profit for the employer, more for the employee. This will also redistribute consumption and may cause temporary price raises in certain goods, which should adjust automatically by increasing offer. This would make sense if only the producers of said goods were real capitalists, willing to take risks and invest to take advantage of a higher demand; but most Argentine businessmen are extremely ignorant, greedy, and shortsighted — they'll cash in extraordinary profits, milking the over-demanded market dry, and then cry over it.