LABOUR-ARGENTINA: Unemployment, Still Seen in an Individual Light

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 10 2000 (IPS) - Although joblessness is by far the most pressing concern cited in opinion polls in Argentina, and affects all sectors alike, each sees their own situation as the most devastating.

Women say they are worse off than men, people over 40 complain that they are at a disadvantage compared to the young, while the young protest that they are not even given a chance due to their lack of prior work experience.

Marín Elías, for example, a 36-year-old publicity writer who recently lost his job, told IPS that in his business, those who are between 20 and 30 years old have the advantage because of their youthful creativity and energy, and they shove aside older people with experience.

But the statistics indicate that youngsters setting out to look for their first jobs are in an even more difficult situation, and many end up agreeing to work for no pay, for the sake of gaining experience.

Official figures indicate that nearly 50 percent of the unemployed in Argentina are under 25. Many of those whose parents can afford it simply sign up for one training course after another.

“In one publicity agency, they threw out the writer and kept on an office-boy who showed some talent at writing,” and who continued to earn the same pittance he was paid before, said Elías.

Unemployment stood at 15.4 percent in May, while under- employment affected another 14.7 percent of the economically active population of this Southern Cone country of 37 million, where an estimated one-third of the population has fallen below the poverty line.

A third category, not yet measured, is made up of those who have lost hope and have given up searching for a job.

A Gallup survey released this week indicated that 64 percent of the unemployed respondents had not finished high school. But those who had gone on to higher education did not appear to be in a better position, as 36 percent of those who remained without a job for the longest time were unemployed university graduates and professionals.

Another twist to the situation is that Argentina is the Latin American country with the largest number of scientists living abroad — a number that grew recently after the government cut the wages of public employees, including researchers at public universities, last month in an attempt to reduce the bulky fiscal deficit.

While the young blame their joblessness on the middle-aged and vice versa, some men complain that women, who have joined the labour force in increasing numbers, have stolen their jobs, while women protest that they comprise a majority in the most precarious and lowest-paid jobs.

The view that women are “helping out” with their wages remains widespread in Argentina, even though the proportion of female heads of households — the source of the family’s sole income or largest salary — is steadily growing.

The Gallup poll found that 47 percent of respondents cited unemployment as the most pressing problem in the country today. The second problem listed was corruption, cited by 15 percent of those interviewed.

Joblessness also figured at the top of the list of personal concerns mentioned by the respondents.

The director of Gallup Argentina, Marita Carballo, pointed out that the proportion of those surveyed who listed unemployment as the country’s biggest problem stood at 30 percent just two years ago, and 40 percent in 1999. “Nothing worries Argentines, even those who have jobs, as much today as unemployment,” she commented.

One indicator of the extent of the desperation is the crowd that gathers every Aug 7 around the parish church of San Cayetano, the patron saint of work, in Buenos Aires.

On Monday, an estimated 40,000 people massed outside the Catholic church to pray for a job.

“Every year there are more people, and people are showing that their faith is growing stronger,” said parish priest Fernando Maletti. Between the hourly masses, the queue of faithful lined up to touch the statue of the saint inched along, as many insisted on entering on their knees.

A lawyer standing in line agreed that faith had been growing alongside the rise in unemployment and the government’s failure to come up with solutions. “People hope God will do what the government is not doing,” he said.

The government of Fernando de la Rúa, in office since December, promises that within a few months investor confidence will be restored, foreign capital will begin flowing back in, the economy will start growing again, and jobs will be created.

But not all of De la Rúa’s ministers are optimistic, and some have already warned that if the unemployment rate is not pulled down, the governing centre-left Alliance — made up of the president’s Radical Civic Union and the Front for a Country with Solidarity — will have failed.

Even though joblessness has been soaring since the early 1990s, the phenomenon continues to be largely seen in an individual light.

Social psychologist Alfredo Moffatt, the founder of a self-help group for the unemployed, “El Bancadero”, told IPS that losing one’s job triggers “a departure from reality.”

“People’s realities are structured around their jobs and their families,” he pointed out. “And if they lose their work, it is very difficult to avert a crisis involving a vacuum, a loss of reality and of one’s plan and projects, which in the medium-term also ends up affecting relations within the family.”

Moffatt pointed out that joblessness has social consequences that are even worse than the loss of wages — the loss of a sense of meaning and purpose in life. “The person out of work feels like a social nobody.”

People who lose their jobs set out on an endless round of searching, for months or even years. Women, including university graduates, take on the role of full-time homemakers and mothers, and gradually lose the social contact with the world that was previously important to them.

Something similar occurs with unemployed men, with the added difficulty that it is socially unacceptable for men to dedicate themselves full-time to child-rearing and household tasks.

“At first, I avoided saying I was out of work,” admitted publicity writer Elías.

Moffat said such “denial” is characteristic of those who believe the problem is their own fault, not the fault of the system that spit them out and refused to give them another chance.

Too discouraged to look for work, and in the worst of cases lacking the money for a bus ticket to even go to a job interview, the unemployed spend hours vegetating in front of the TV set, depressed and living vicariously through soap opera characters or movie stars.

Moffatt recommends that the jobless get out and do community or volunteer work, join up with others in their situation, or try to come up with joint solutions.

He also advises talking about the problem with others, even when no solution is in sight. “Sharing one’s pain is like giving a little bit of that pain to each of our listeners,” and perhaps by talking, the jobless will learn that they are not as alone as they believe, said the psychologist.