ARGENTINA-LABOUR: Protests, Roadblocks Continue to Spread

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 15 1997 (IPS) - Argentina’s soaring unemployment has hit towns in several outlying provinces particularly hard, and the protests racking the country have increasingly incorporated roadblocks to draw government attention to the plight of large sectors of the population.

Workers in the industrial city of San Lorenzo – in the central- eastern province of Santa Fe – where 40 percent of the economically active population lacks jobs, blocked two highways Thursday.

The measure, added to a 24-hour general strike, was implemented mainly to protest 16 to 18-hour workdays, and to demand a reduction in hours but not wages, which would allow some 2,000 unemployed access to jobs. The protesters are also asking for higher funding for public hospitals and schools.

The head of the San Lorenzo General Confederation of Labour, Edgardo Quiroga, said the strategy of the roadblocks, “an experience that emerged from the people, was incorporated to call for an end to exploitation and the creation of new jobs.”

“The two faces of Argentina’s economic model can be seen” in San Lorenzo, said Quiroga: “There is a shrinking sector that will export six billion dollars worth of goods this year, while nearly half of the workers are out of work.”

In Argentina, economic stability and growth has been accompanied in the 1990s by an increase in the unemployment rate, which has soared to today’s nationwide average of 17.4 percent, added to 13.6 percent under-employment.

The phenomenon has hit towns and cities in the provinces especially hard. In Cutral Co, in the southern province of Neuquen, where roadblocks were first introduced in March and April and one person was killed and dozens injured in a crackdown by security forces, unemployment affects 35 percent of the population, thanks largely to the closing of a branch of the YPF oil company.

And in Tartagal, in the northwestern province of Salta, near the Bolivian border, a full 65 percent of the economically active population is out of jobs, partly due to the closing of another YPF plant.

The government said Thursday that it would not negotiate with protesters who manned roadblocks, and warned that the protests would scare off foreign investment.

Jorge Obeid, governor of the province of Santa Fe – where Thursday’s conflict was the third to break out in a month – expressed his concern over “the spread of this method of pressure against the government,” adding that “there are violent minority groups that are seeking a confrontation” with authorities.

The use of roadblocks has had some success. Although police resorted to the use of force – water hoses, gas and bullets – to clear the road into Cutral Co, workers secured government promises of new jobs and unemployment benefits.

In Tartagal, where workers and unemployed camping out with their families at a roadblock on the provincial route demanded jobs and backpay, the government promised some 4,000 temporary jobs of up to one year in length that are to pay 200 pesos a month, less than half the minimum salary.

Quiroga said local authorities in the province of Santa Fe have also promised to create new jobs, but in community gardens for 200 dollars a month – less than appealing to “workers in the chemical, petrochemical, plastic, cooking oil and ceramic industries.”