Argentina: Health Workers Announce Fight Plan For Living Wage

May 19, 2024 Hour: 11:47 am

The union representing workers in the health sector in Argentina, the Federation of Health Workers Associations of Argentina (FATSA), announced this Sunday a “plan of struggle”, with assemblies and cessation of work in the coming days, in demand for salary improvements.

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The measure of force was launched by the FATSA and will begin this Monday and Tuesday with assemblies of workers in all shifts and sectors, while between Wednesday and Friday there will be a strike of a few hours per shift.

“Employers shirk their primary responsibility to pay wages commensurate with the importance of the work done. Inflation and the spectacular devaluation carried out in December have dynamited the purchasing power of wages,” FATSA said in a statement released last week.

�� Estado de Alerta y Movilización: sobre las Negociaciones Paritarias del Sector Asistencial. pic.twitter.com/6rLRkKypIO

— ATSA Córdoba (@ATSACORDOBA)
May 10, 2024

Statement released by the health workers union the last week.

The workers point out that the increases achieved in February and March, corresponding to approximately 48%, were buried by price increases, rates and public services of recent months carried out by the administration of President Javier Milei.

Héctor Daer, leader of FATSA and general secretary of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the largest trade union center in Argentina, announced that “Faced with this new reality, in which the entrepreneurs do not want to reach an agreement to improve the salaries of our comrades in the healthcare sector, we decided to start a national struggle plan to make our claim visible.”

Health workers say will not accept wages whose purchasing power is absolutely deteriorated, they demand the fair wage recomposition they deserve and earn with their work: “We are again on the eve of a conflict that we do not seek and do not want, but the entrepreneurial irresponsibility and the intransigence of the Business Chambers to sign a parity agreement leave us no alternative.”

The measure of force reaches about 300,000 workers in hospitals, clinics, sanatoriums, emergency services, diagnostic centers, geriatrics, psychiatric and home medicine services. In a context of high inflation in Argentina (289.4% y-o-y in April), the union warned that it will not “tolerate frozen wages without increases since March”.