LABOUR-ARGENTINA: Public Employment Prized, Despite Shortfalls

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 27 2000 (IPS) - It is not easy to land a post at the Clinicas teaching hospital in the Argentine capital, even though the elevators don’t work, only four of the existing 10 boilers are in use, plaster and paint are peeling from the walls, and wages are ridiculously low.

Despite the often dismal working conditions, staff at the hospital, which is affiliated with the public University of Buenos Aires, receive training that brings prestige, since prominent, highly experienced doctors continue working in the hospital in an honorary capacity.

Poor working conditions do not mean it is a simple matter to win a job in Argentina’s public health centres. In fact, the high competition for each opening means applicants must make it through a complex series of exams.

Recent medical school graduates aspiring to a post in a public hospital must pass an admission exam, and must commit themselves to a four-year residency, during which they are overworked and underpaid.

“A resident earns 700 dollars a month in the capital and 900 dollars in the rest of the province of Buenos Aires, but it is only a four-year contract,” Dr. Marcelo Zelaya explained to IPS.

“We (residents) work 12 hours a day on average, but sometimes you finish a 24-hour shift on duty and you just have to keep working, without being able to go home in between,” he pointed out.

But not even doctors with long years of experience earn high salaries in the public sector. For example, said Zelaya, a physician with 14 years of experience earns just 800 dollars a month, working eight-hour days.

Psychologist Andrea Sola, who works in public health as well as in her private practice, told IPS that even doctors who charge 300 dollars for a private visit do not abandon the public sector because it is the area where they can earn experience and prestige.

Sola attends patients every day at the Tobar Garcia children’s psychiatric hospital, in downtown Buenos Aires, for a total monthly salary of 400 dollars — the same amount she charges for each 50-minute session in her private office, paid by patients she sees three times a week.

She is not considering leaving her public sector job, however, although she laments the run-down state of the hospitals and the lack of support for self-management programmes and other initiatives organised by professional associations. “Psychiatric patients are socially ill people marginalised by society and the state,” she said, explaining her dedication.

Researchers in state institutions face their own difficulties. Valeria Buggiano, who holds a doctorate in biology, remarked in a conversation with IPS that “the more highly-specialised and highly-trained a researcher becomes in Argentina, the more foolish the effort seems to be.”

Buggiano described the career prospects of a researcher in the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET).

“In CONICET, take-home pay is 700 dollars for an assistant researcher with a completed thesis, experience in research and teaching, and doctorate and post-doctorate studies — in other words, with at least 10 years of professional experience under their belts,” she said.

Only after accumulating at least 10 years seniority and overcoming all kinds of challenges — pressure to publish, present research findings, etc — does a researcher’s salary rise to 1,200 dollars a month, or to 1,500 once the category of “independent researcher” is attained.

But that status depends on promotions decided on by a panel every two years, and “independent researchers” must give up any other public job they might hold, for example a professorship at a university.

“And of course we don’t enjoy the same facilities as legislators, who make all the photocopies they want or travel anywhere they wish for free,” Buggiano added.

Nor do they enjoy the same salaries. In fact, government ministers and legislators earn up to 30 times what other public sector employees like school teachers, doctors or researchers take home — at a time when the government is attempting to balance its accounts by cutting the wages of civil servants.

The average income of public school teachers is 300 dollars a month, while ministers make 10,000 dollars between their salaries and expenses (the head of the cabinet earns an additional 1,000 dollars), and parliamentary deputies and senators earn 3,000 to 27,000 dollars a month.

The president and vice-president, however, earn less than 5,000 dollars a month.

The director of the Institute for Marketing Research and Political Studies, Hartmut Hentschel, said “people are motivated to enter politics in Argentina in their search for a career based on money and power,” while in public universities, hospitals or research institutions, “professionals have another mentality and different motivations.

“They are keen on advancing in their quest for knowledge and progressing in their fields, and are resigned to earning the low salaries paid by the state,” he added.

But Cristian Gruenberg, who specialises in the fight against corruption with the local non-governmental group Citizen Power, told IPS that political leaders “have to earn very well, because that discourages corruption.”

However, he admitted that despite the high salaries, many of those who entered the public administration did not have an acceptable level of professional training or experience.

A survey carried out by Citizen Power last year found that the three branches of the state had the worst public image. In fact, “92 percent of respondents said they had no faith in the justice system,” said Gruenberg.

But he clarified that public hospitals and universities continued to enjoy high prestige. “For a doctor, belonging to the staff of a public hospital brings a prestige not earned in private practice, no matter how jam-packed with patients their private office is,” said the activist.

“People see the three branches of the state as enemies, while they perceive institutions in the health and education sectors, despite their shortcomings, as being run in accordance with the criteria of equity and equal access for all,” Gruenberg added.

The survey found that people were upset not so much by the huge salaries earned by legislators and government ministers, as with their strident insistence on achieving fiscal balance, as a justification for slashing public sector wages by 12 percent this year.

“They have the power, and they use it in their own favour, by setting high salaries for themselves,” said Hentschel.