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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1364 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 25, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Argentina

There was a huge general strike on Wednesday against Milei’s reforms featuring tens of thousands of workers, some sources claiming as many as a hundred thousand, and it lasted for 12 hours:

The stoppage began at midday, and banks, gas stations, public administration, public health officials and trash collection were operating on a limited basis. Airports remained open, although state-owned airline Aerolineas Argentinas canceled 267 flights and rescheduled others, disrupting travel plans for more than 17,000 passengers.

Public transportation workers went on strike at 7 p.m. in Buenos Aires and surrounding areas, but had operated normally during the daytime to facilitate protesters’ access to and from the plaza in front of Congress.

By Wednesday afternoon, tens of thousands of protesters had flooded in. Héctor Daer, CGT’s secretary general, told the crowd from atop a stage that Milei’s decree “destroys individual rights of workers, collective rights and seeks to eliminate the possibility of union action at a time in which we have great inequality in society.”

As best as I can tell it seems to have gone okay, no economic calamity of police brutality that jumps out in the papers, but you can definitely expect more if any of his reforms make it through Congress. Speaking of which, Milei’s omnibus bill made it out of their equivalent of a congressional committee, which was its first hurdle, so it can now be voted on. But many members of JxC have reservations over different sections. Milei has moderated on a few details, including postponing the privatization of the state oil company YPF (this was a a campaign pledged of his but on polls privatization of the State Owned Enterprises in general is very unpopular, so many a reasonable point to moderate on). His dueling executive decree is tied up with like a bazillion lawsuits rn so that’s not moving any quicker than the legislative process.

There are obviously some state functions that are genuinely essential, or at least things that pretty much everyone wants, so I could see those having a meaningful impact. On the other hand, the idea of public health officials and other officious bureaucrats refusing to show up for work and expecting that this will move public opinion to their side is fairly hilarious from my generally economically libertarian perspective. Oh no, how could a restaurant possibly operate if we didn't have someone checking whether the milk was stored at the proper temperature? Surely this will result in thousands dead from food poisoning!

I would mostly expect this to demonstrate to the public that a lot of government jobs are people that are paid to annoy normal people.

There are obviously some state functions that are genuinely essential, or at least things that pretty much everyone wants, so I could see those having a meaningful impact.

One of the reforms Milei is trying to press through would actually make it harder for essential workers to strike at all, afaik currently there are no restrictions.

On the other hand, the idea of public health officials and other officious bureaucrats refusing to show up for work and expecting that this will move public opinion to their side is fairly hilarious from my generally economically libertarian perspective.

The standard move for these strikes used to be using all those non-working folks to block traffic and otherwise cause a ruckus, but Milei promised to arrest anyone who did that. Surprisingly, this seemingly hasn't led to any bad confrontations between the police and protestors.

Health inspections are genuinely important but the idea that a strike lasting 12 hours would be noticed by all but the most essential workers is farcical.

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