Teachers in Buenos Aires Are Striking Against Neoliberalism

[Judi Lynn]

BY
LISBETH LATHAM

Buenos Aires’s neoliberal government has used the pandemic to impose austerity on the city’s primary and secondary school teachers. Argentine teachers are fighting back with a campaign of rolling strikes.


Buenos Aires’s public school secondary teachers and the unions that represent them are locked in a battle with the local government over job security and working conditions. The mechanisms that have historically allowed teachers to move from insecure to secure employment are breaking down. The city’s Ministry of Education and Innovation is also attempting to “modernize” the system that allocates administrative work to teachers. Together, these developments are worsening the conditions of teaching staff, already made difficult by the ongoing pandemic.

The ministry is taking advantage of the growing rates of precarious employment within Argentina to worsen teachers’ working conditions. The goal of these reforms is to save municipal government money by cutting the number of administrative staff in schools. What the ministry calls modernization really means ramping up teachers’ workloads while cutting jobs and reducing the security and work conditions of those kept in employment.

Two unions that organize teachers in Argentina have launched a rolling strike campaign in response to these changes. The first is the Union of Education Workers–Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic (Unión de Trabajadores de la Educación–Confederación de Trabajadores de la Educación de la República Argentina, UTE-CTERA), which is the largest labor organization affiliated to the Argentine Workers’ Central Union (Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina, CTA). Its leadership is aligned with the movement inspired by Nestor Kirchner, Argentina’s center-left populist president who governed the country from 2003 to 2007. The UTE-CTERA also has member unions aligned with traditional Peronism, the Communist Party, and other socialist tendencies.

The second union leading the strikes is the Teaching Association of Secondary and Higher Education (Asociación Docentes de Enseñanza Media y Superior, Ademys). More militant and independent of Peronism and Kirchnerism than UTE-CTERA, the union organizes middle and high school teachers in Buenos Aires. Ademys has links with the Workers’ Left Front (Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores, FIT), an electoral coalition bringing together four of Argentina’s Trotskyist organizations. The FIT received 5.91 percent of the national vote in Argentina’s November 14 elections.

The ministry is taking advantage of the growing rates of precarious employment within Argentina to worsen teachers’ working conditions. The goal of these reforms is to save municipal government money by cutting the number of administrative staff in schools. What the ministry calls modernization really means ramping up teachers’ workloads while cutting jobs and reducing the security and work conditions of those kept in employment.

Two unions that organize teachers in Argentina have launched a rolling strike campaign in response to these changes. The first is the Union of Education Workers–Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic (Unión de Trabajadores de la Educación–Confederación de Trabajadores de la Educación de la República Argentina, UTE-CTERA), which is the largest labor organization affiliated to the Argentine Workers’ Central Union (Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina, CTA). Its leadership is aligned with the movement inspired by Nestor Kirchner, Argentina’s center-left populist president who governed the country from 2003 to 2007. The UTE-CTERA also has member unions aligned with traditional Peronism, the Communist Party, and other socialist tendencies.

The second union leading the strikes is the Teaching Association of Secondary and Higher Education (Asociación Docentes de Enseñanza Media y Superior, Ademys). More militant and independent of Peronism and Kirchnerism than UTE-CTERA, the union organizes middle and high school teachers in Buenos Aires. Ademys has links with the Workers’ Left Front (Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores, FIT), an electoral coalition bringing together four of Argentina’s Trotskyist organizations. The FIT received 5.91 percent of the national vote in Argentina’s November 14 elections.

More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/12/public-schools-unions-argentina-working-conditions-larreta-fernandez