Milei fires 24,000 public employees in Argentina: “No one knows who will be next”

Javier Milei believes that “the State is the enemy”, “a criminal association” which he seeks to reduce to its minimum expression amidst criticism and applause from a polarized society. When he took office as president of Argentina, in December, the State had 341,477 people employed. Two months later, the Government had already eliminated 9,000 jobs, and this week it ordered 15,000 more layoffs. New staff layoffs are coming in the middle of the year, but it is not known how many or who they will be. Some 50,000 workers are in this climate of uncertainty: they are those who do not have a permanent position, but rather temporary contracts. Before they were renewed once a year; Now, they know that they have passed the first stage, but their positions are still under review for three or six more months.

“We are experiencing a situation of psychological terror,” said a worker from the Ministry of Children, Adolescents and Family last Wednesday. She was afraid to give her name due to possible reprisals, like other interviewees. “Milei said there were going to be 70,000 layoffs, then they said 15,000, or 20,000. "This back and forth impacts our mental health and daily life, everyone is paralyzed without knowing what is going to happen, no one knows who will be next," he added hours before superiors began to notify those who were not going to renew contracts that expire on March 31. That Secretariat is the most affected state agency, with 1,656 casualties, almost half of the 3,600 registered in the entire Ministry of Human Capital.

A young man participates in the protest this Wednesday, in Buenos Aires (Argentina).Juan Ignacio Roncoroni

Milei, an economist who defines himself as an anarcho-capitalist, announced from day one that a major cut in state personnel was coming. As a first measure, he demanded 100% presence to unmask the “gnocchi”, as the fictitious state workers are known in Argentina, placed by the parties, who only come to the office one day a month to get paid. They are called that because

gnocchi

, a typical Italian dish, are served on the 29th of each month in Argentine restaurants, and it is a date close to the date of collection of salaries.

About to complete four months in office, Milei's order was to reduce between 15% and 20% of state personnel with temporary contracts. The official argument is that Argentina is “an impoverished country” with a state that is too large and inefficient. “It seems to me that there is a fairly general consensus in society to not continue paying for issues that do not correspond with the Argentina we live in and with the size of the State that people voted for at the polls,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on Wednesday.

According to an analysis by the Mediterránea Foundation, in mid-2023 Argentina employed 20 state workers for every 100,000 employed, a relationship that placed the country sixth on the list of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), only below Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and France. In qualitative terms, however, the country places below the middle of the table in a World Bank index that measures government effectiveness and where it obtained a score of 41.9 out of 100 in 2022.

Some employees had sensed for weeks that their name was on the layoff list. This is the case of those who worked in the official advertising section, canceled by Milei for a year upon taking office. “An office that worked piecework was paralyzed and we were left without functions,” says one of the workers fired from that department. She regrets that due to this official decision, the Government has not launched a dengue prevention campaign in the media even though Argentina is going through the worst outbreak in its history, with more than 150,000 cases and 106 deaths.

The employees of this section went every day to complete their eight-hour work day without having anything to do. “It was psychological torture,” says the dismissed interviewee. Her biggest fear, confirmed two days ago, was being left without the health insurance provided by the State and thanks to which her disabled son could access treatments that will now be interrupted.

A closed labor market

Participants in the protest called by workers of the state news agency Télam in Buenos Aires. Enrique García Medina (EFE)

Many tried to anticipate and find work in a private company, but almost none succeeded: Argentina is in the middle of an economic crisis and a collapse in consumption where most companies do not hire, but rather reduce staff. In January, the last month with official data, economic activity fell 4.3% compared to 12 months earlier, the worst contraction since the covid pandemic.

In his last public appearance, the presidential spokesperson assured that the selection of the employees who were going to be fired was an “extremely surgical job so as not to make mistakes, so that no one loses their job who does not deserve it.” Those interviewed, on the other hand, believe that it was done at random. Among those fired are people who began working in the State during Kirchnerism, but also during Macrism (2015-2019), today an ally of Milei in Congress. There are young people and others close to retirement age. There are people with dependent family members and union representatives who are illegal to fire.

“There was no criterion in the lists. They fired people who had joined in recent years and others with 15, 20 years of experience,” says Natalia, who worked since 2017 at the Road Safety Agency. “Each one was summoned by his immediate superior and told that his contract was not going to be renewed. We went down from different floors, all crying because we didn't understand,” she says. Natalia considers it irresponsible to have dismissed staff from this agency just before a six-day long weekend: “All agents should be on the road doing blood alcohol and speed checks, this shows the Government's total disinterest in road safety.” .

The unions have organized protests in front of official headquarters in an atmosphere of tension. Last week, at the doors of the Human Rights Secretariat, a guard of Secretary Alberto Baños “tried to pull out a firearm in front of the workers,” according to the State Workers Association (ATE), which represents half of the workers. the nearly 1,000 secretariat workers. “We do not resort to violence to exercise our right to express our disagreement and we hope that officials are up to the task,” says the union's statement. “In no way are we going to allow acts of intimidation.”

The sources consulted agree that the cut has been much higher than that made at the start of Mauricio Macri's administration and that the initial disorganization has also been higher. There are offices that still do not have a designated director and others have seen two or even three bosses pass in just four months. The situation is repeated outside the public administration, in companies and state organizations in which EL PAÍS has selected some testimonies that give an account of the situation.

Public media silenced

In February, Milei decreed the intervention of all state media for one year as part of a plan for the “reorganization of public companies.” In some cases, such as National Radio or Public TV, there have been layoffs; In others, such as the state news agency Télam, which Milei has said he wants to close, all workers are suspended and prevented from accessing the facilities. “The agency has been silenced for 24 days,” says Braulio Cabrera, 33 years old. He is a union delegate and works in the agency's photographic archive area, which preserves historical material that workers fear is “at risk” due to the intervention.

Micaela Polak, who is a producer at Radio Nacional, says that there is “a lot of anxiety” among public media workers. “It has a lot to do with what is happening at the communication level with the Government. We find out about things unexpectedly and there are many rumors,” she says. At Radio Nacional there were 500 terminations of contracts in January. Polak is not among them, but she criticizes the precariousness among her colleagues, many of whom earn a basic salary of 380,000 pesos ($380) and do not have permanent contracts. “There is a myth that we charge a lot and the truth is that we don't. My colleagues who have to raise children alone or who have to rent keep two or three jobs,” she says.

Until Tuesday, the radio will not broadcast regular programming because there is a long weekend holiday in Argentina and paying workers on those days means a larger budget for the company. In the State, the Government repeats, “there is no money.” “This never happened. Not only is it a loss of salary, it means that we are left without providing service. Only music will be broadcast from Buenos Aires and some bulletins,” says the producer. Polak also points out the social function that radio plays in some areas of the country where local stations allow residents of remote places to send and receive messages: “The service in those places is essential.”

Scientific research, in crisis

At Conicet, the main scientific research organization in Argentina, 140 layoffs have been recorded so far, but the chainsaw has also passed through doctoral scholarships - from 1,300 in 2023 it has now gone up to 600 - and through the budget for investigate, which is the same as last year, but with a value equivalent to a third of then due to inflation.

“We are facing the impossibility of continuing many investigations,” warns Nuria Giniger, Conicet researcher and union delegate. Among them there are some key ones for the country, such as those that have to do with diseases such as dengue or chagas, she emphasizes. “Work stress has multiplied by a thousand. "They started by firing the administrative staff and reducing the scholarships, but who tells you that they are not going to continue with the researchers and support staff," he adds, recalling that Milei in the campaign said that "Conicet, as it exists today, must be closed." ”.

Less Argentine cinema

Braulio Vega Santana, 20 years old, demonstrated more than 10 days ago in front of the doors of the Gaumont cinema, a historic theater in Buenos Aires that the Government wants to sell and was the epicenter of a protest against the “drastic reduction” of film financing. Argentina of the new Government. Vega Santana is now preparing to protest again against the layoffs at the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA) and the termination of contracts of self-employed workers like him because nothing has changed. Wednesday, March 27, was his last day of work in an area in which he is dedicated to monitoring one of the funds delivered by the institute. “It's called Brief Stories, it is perhaps the most important and from there personalities like [filmmaker] Lucrecia Martel emerge. Today, the two of us who carried out that contest are unemployed,” says Vega Santana.

Young people, older adults and a diverse group of citizens demonstrated in the Plaza del Congreso against President Javier Milei for his decision not to finance the INCAA and the Gaumont cinema, a cultural space that shows Argentine and Latin American cinema at low cost. Tiago Ramirez Baquero

For four months, he states, the delivery of funds for the audiovisual projects that competed in 2022 “is frozen.” The Government appointed the new president of INCAA, Carlos Pirovano, only at the end of February. The economist, with no experience in the audiovisual sector, immediately signed a series of articles published in the

Official Gazette

to remove financial support from the provinces, cancel the contracts of some of the staff, suspend the payment of overtime and put an end to travel, cell phone expenses, buying food and paying for transfers. “He comes with the same speech as Milei and is firing employees who earn pittance. We don't know what his plan is within the INCAA. “He is a president who came exclusively to cut,” he says.

For workers in the sector, with cuts in culture, not only jobs are at stake. For Vega Santana, access to culture and the diversity of artistic, theatrical, and literary productions is at risk... “The INCAA allows producers from any part of the country, with any ideology, to make a film without a prior budget. It is an act of censorship towards the industry that someone who wants to produce has to go through a Netflix filter,” says Vega Santana. The Argentine Chamber of Bookstores denounced something similar when it criticized that Milei's omnibus law—with more than 600 articles that were ultimately not approved—put in “danger” the “varied and bibliodiverse network of bookstores and publishers” in the country.

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