© Telam
After camping in front of Social Development, the organizations of the Piquetera Unit will demonstrate from noon in front of the Ministry of Laborwhile the Salary Council is in session to define the recomposition of the Minimum salary, vital and movil. With this protest demand a raise that equates it to the basic family basket.
The Empower workers today earn 16,500 pesos, half the minimum wage and less than half of the basket of indigence. With the tents installed and after a monthly inflation rate of 4.7% (and year-on-year of 52.3%) was released, the Minister of Social Development, Juan Zabaleta, announced on Tuesday the payment of a bonus of 6,000 pesos for the million 200 thousand holders of the plan in the month of April. However, he did not receive the leaders of the organizations of the left that carried out the camp and that demand, in addition to an increase in the amount they receive, that the ministry reopen the Program so that it reaches more unemployed people.
“This is the first camp that we do during the government of Alberto Fernández and we believe that he has to take stock of what is happening“, he said from the avenue 9 de Julio Silvia Saravia, from Barrios de Pie. “There is a story that people who are in the Potential get registered work, go to work, but that does not happen, or it happens in a marginal amount. We are in a critical situation.” Another requirement is more food assistance for community kitchens and picnic areas.
The sectors that mobilize
The demonstration has four calling sectors: the Polo Obrero, BdP, the MST and the Coordinator for Social Change. Over the weekend, in a Congress held in the Plaza de Mayo, together with some forty groups that make up the Unidad Piquetera, they voted for a plan of struggle.
Since Monday, the day before the camp in Social Development, a sector of the groups maintain a stay of 72 hours in front of the Ministry of Labor. “The bonus of 6,000 pesos is absolute misery. The cost of the food basket confirms this: a family today needs 78,000 pesos to cover it.”
The Meeting of the Salary Council will be held from 3:00 p.m.through a virtual session. It is made up of union representatives, employers and the State. From the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy – the popular movements that are part of the Front of All -, they confirmed that they will participate in the deliberations represented by its head, Esteban “Gringo” Castro.
The UTEP established its position in a document in which it did not speak of percentage increases, but it did reiterate “the need to recognize our sector, that of the popular economy.”
“A reasonable increase in the Vital and Mobile Minimum Wage is essential, since it lost a large part of its purchasing power in the same period in which inflation continues to climb. According to the latest data from INDEC, our sector is barely above the indigence line and below the poverty line. It is essential to agree that the priority must be to rebuild the economic and social structure of Argentina from the bottom up, really starting with the last ones.”