As soon as he took office as Economy Minister, in August 2022, Sergio Massa announced a freeze on vacancies in public employment that depends on the national government.
But last year, perhaps before that announcement, and who knows if after, the public companies managed to increase their personnel.
Specifically, in the first nine months of 2022, 1,876 new appointments
were added to the staff of the so-called "entrepreneurial State" .
Thus, the total of 35 companies closed the third quarter with
92,930 employees,
against 91,054 that had closed in 2021. The increase in personnel did not stop despite the
growing deficit
registered by public companies: in the first nine months of 2022 they registered
operating losses for close to 5,600 million dollars,
although they would have closed the year with a red slightly lower than US$ 5,000 million.
In 25 of the 35 companies there was an increase in personnel, and in the remaining 10 there was a staff adjustment.
Leading the appointments are
Road Corridors
-which depends on the Ministry of Public Works under the command of Gabriel Katopodis- which added 570 employees,
an increase of 17%
.
This company posted an operating deficit of about $8 billion.
Later,
Operadora Ferroviaria Sociedad del Estado
(OFSE) appears generically known as
Trenes Argentinos
.
It added 525 employees to its bulging workforce, which reaches 24,141 employees.
The trains depend on the Ministry of Transportation, an area where Minister Sergio Massa put trusted men.
Clarin
reported that the railway holding, made up of OFSE, Belgrano Cargas, Ferrocarriles Argentinos Sociedad del Estado (FASE), Administration of Railway Infrastructure (ADIF) and Development of Railway Human Capital (DECAHF) is the
main employer in the country.
They add between the five companies
697 new positions
and reach
30,722 jobs.
The trains are, in addition to the main employer, one of the public companies with
the highest operating deficit.
Measured in dollars at the official exchange rate, between January and September 2022 it registered a red of
966 million dollars, equivalent to a little more than 3.5 million dollars of daily losses.
The company Trenes Argentinos is very active in the diffusion of the reopening or recovery of new passenger branches.
A highly promoted case was that of the Retiro - Rufino (Santa Fe) - Justo Daract (San Luis) service.
According to official data, in all of last year, 40,583 passengers used this service, paying an average of $3,200.
A collection of 130 million pesos,
less than a million dollars at the average official exchange rate of 2022
.
In the whole year.
That same stretch, by bus, costs about $9,000.
The third company that incorporated the most personnel was
Fabricaciones Militares,
which registered an
operating surplus of 1,114 million
pesos.
It added 200 employees and totals 1,390 jobs.
The operator of the nuclear power plants,
NASA
, appears with 200 incorporations.
It had a deficit of 1,252 million.
Aerolíneas Argentinas,
one of the public companies with the most losses but which has the particularity that it does not sell tickets at subsidized rates (it costs the same to travel to Madrid, for example, in Airlines than in Iberia) continued to increase its staff.
It is already at 11,447 employees, an increase of 79 workers last year
.
The airline received subsidies for 72,000 million pesos last year, according to official data from the Ministry of Economy.
The company says that they did not exceed $50,000 million, but the numbers from the Economy spreadsheets say otherwise.
Another striking case is that of
Yacimientos Carboníferos Río Turbio
, which uses the bulk of its operating income to pay salaries.
The number of employees increased by 143
, despite the fact that it produces almost no coal.
Official data says that in 2022 it had operating income of $298 million and operating expenses of $9,243 million.
86
% of that money went to pay salaries.
Correo Argentino
stands out from the one that shrunk its plant
, which
reduced 796 employees and left its staff at 17,868 workers
.
Correo is in the ranking of those that lose the most, with an operating deficit of 187 million dollars in the first three quarters of 2022. Although it sounds unreal,
the company where La Cámpora stomps
is the one that reduced its staff the most.