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.