Argentina - May 25, 2022

Hunger, the cost of living, slave labor and unemployment…
We can't take it anymore!

On May 12, in the Federal March, tens of thousands of unemployed workers took to the streets…
Enough begging for alms! Decent work for all!

The forces rise up to unite the working ranks

We must defeat the union bureaucracy of the CGT-CTA and its Social Deal with the government!

General strike!

The Federal March of the “Picketer Unit” demonstrated the deployment of a sector of the masses, led by the Polo Obrero, Barrios de Pie, Libres del Sur, the Teresa Vive MST, the Cuba MTR, among others, which mobilized more than 60,000 unemployed workers to Plaza de Mayo... under the slogan: "Fighting against hunger, for work and for a salary equal to the family basket for workers and the  retired."
The case is that this Fernandezes government is imposing the most brutal attack on millions of exploited with inflation, high cost of living, unemployment, precariousness and repression of those who fight. Faced with this offensive, the main orators at the Plaza de Mayo event on May 12 exhibited their pressure policy on the IMF-directed  government, demanding the CGT to call for a national strike. But the union bureaucracy-turned-businessmen are not affected even by tens of thousands of unemployed marching through the city because they are devoted to defend their own interests in their infamous Social Deal with the Fernandezes government, an agreement that guarantees the attack of the "Group of 6" (the Stock Exchange, the UIA, the banks, the Rural Society and the Chambers of Commerce and Construction) and the imperialist looting. Down with the Social Deal of the trade union and picketer bureaucracy with the government and the big slaver bosses!

The plan of the IMF and the oligarchy is to eliminate the "social plans" - a subsidy for unemployed workers won with blood in the revolutionary days of 2001 - to turn them into "work plans" to guarantee cheap precarious labor of $45,000 pesos/month/per head to the employers. If this attack advances, it is because the union bureaucracy has divided the working ranks, while the capitalists, with the terror of layoffs in a sea of millions of unemployed, impose greater precariousness on the working class. For its part, the picketer bureaucracy integrated into the government puts the unemployed as beggars at the feet of the Ministry of Development and Social Action. In this way they prevent the unity of the working ranks, deepening the gap between employed and unemployed workers, thus imposing greater labor flexibility.
The hell that the working class and the poor people are living today will not be vanished by means of demands but by putting the forces of the tens of thousands of unemployed workers in the streets to call on their employed class brothers and sisters to paralyze production for decent wages and work for everybody. On May 12, a great opportunity was lost for the unemployed workers to be the spokespersons for millions of exploited as in 2001 and a lever to unite the ranks of the workers, defeating the treacherous union bureaucracy in the streets and marching on the CGT and the CTA to impose the General Strike.

The PO and its shameful “united front” with the treacherous union bureaucracy
E. Belliboni (Polo Obrero/Partido Obrero) stated on May 12: "We demand from the CGT a national strike against the adjustment" , taking a leap on May 19, where he told to TN (important bourgeois news channel): "We are going to look for a common action, between organizations of the employed and unemployed, and the idea is to ask the CGT and the CTA for a meeting and measures…”. They seek to fraternize with the enemy, with the guarantors of the government offensive and the IMF's plans. So much so, that on May 11, while the March was taking place, the CGT staff met with the US ambassador, Marc Stanley.
The leadership of the Polo Obrero proposes a shameful “united front” to the union bureaucracy, which provides the government with “ministers” without portfolios like Daer (CGT National-Member of its Triumvirate- Health workers Union) or Baradel (Teachers Union-CTA B. Aires) and deputies like Yasky (Head of CTA National- official Frente de Todos Coalition)… With that treacherous union bureaucracy that allows the majority of the employed workers having to survive by doing grueling overtime to make ends meet, while millions are jobless.

Even A. Crespo from SUTNA (Tire workers) demands 200% extra pay for those hours or for working on Saturdays and Sundays, instead of fighting for a minimum wage of $173,000 pesos as proposed by D. Yoffra (oil-mill workers), who even suggests that in order to conquer it, the CGT should organize a strike for indefinite time. Actually, any union that does not fight for a vital and mobile minimum wage for everybody, equal to the family basket and indexed by inflation month by month... can only serve to guarantee double production to the bosses with the same number of slave workers at will. Which would divide even more the working ranks. Break right now with the policy of subordination to the union bureaucracy and its Social Pact!
According to their "policy of demands", the leadership of the PO as well as that of the PTS and the entire FIT-U affirm that with pressure marches on the government the non-payment of the debt to the IMF can be conquered, omitting that in 2001 in order to impose the cessation of payments (default) it was necessary to fight in the streets, suffering more than 40 dead and kicking out De la Rúa who had to flee in a chopper from the roof of the Rosada House. Thank to this, the economy was able to grow at rates of 9% per year, since until 2005 the debt to the IMF was not paid. Now in Sri Lanka the battles of the masses colliding in the streets with the repressive forces for months, not only swept away Prime Minister Rajapaksa , but also forced the bourgeoisie to suspend the payment of the debt to the IMF. In this rotten system you have to fight for everything to conquer even the smallest something.

Two paths for the unemployed workers:
a "Social Movement" set to beg miserable alms to the State or a picketer movement like the one in 2001 to unite the ranks of the workers and defeat the government

The working class fared poorly with the policy of pressure on the Administration in power and the division imposed between the employed and the unemployed by the union and picketer bureaucracy. The Polo Obrero, liquidating all vestiges of workers' democracy, follows the same path today... Enough of calling the names of the attendees to the marches to register their attendance and cancel the "social plans" of the absentees! Stop using it as a whip to control and discipline the unemployed workers! Let the picketer movement of 2001 return!

In this sense, the Third (Communist) International stated that: " The capitalists utilise the constantly expanding army of the unemployed to pressure organised workers by reducing wages. The cowardly Social Democrats, Independents, and official trade-union leaders hold themselves aloof from the unemployed, regarding them only as recipients of government and trade-union charity, and categorising them politically as the lumpenproletariat. Communists must understand that under present conditions the army of unemployed is a revolutionary factor of immense importance. Communists must take the leadership of this army. Through the pressure of the unemployed on the trade unions, Communists must hasten the unions’ renewal and, above all, free them from their traitorous leaders. (...) In short, they will transform the mass of unemployed from a reserve army of industry into an active army of revolution.”. (Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921, “Theses on Tactics and Strategy”)

For the Polo Obrero/FIT-U, the path is not to overthrow the union and picketer bureaucracy in the streets as the key to defeat the attack of the Fernandezes, the PRO-UCR (opposition) and the IMF, and conquer all our demands. That is why they take the slogan of reducing the working day and sharing working hours to the parliamentary field without attacking the property of the capitalists. That is why they reduce it to the scam of bills to be approved with the pressure of "popular mobilization", as if that den of bandits of the Congress were not openly at the service of the IMF and Wall Street. But, in addition, for the PO and the entire FIT-U it does not seem to be incompatible to demand 200% for extra hours and Sundays as Crespo does in SUTNA and at the same time pressure Parliament to reduce the working day.
For the revolutionaries this system that does not even feed its slaves deserves to die; contrariwise, for the PO and the entire FIT-U it still deserves to exist. That is why they argue that it is possible to achieve some social reform under rotting capitalism, when they know that capitalists and their governments only will give up something if they see that they can lose everything.

Stop lying! Any social reform can only be achieved as a by-product of the revolutionary struggle of the masses. Even everything that is conquered will be lost if the exploited do not take power. That is why the PO's, and the entire FIT-U's, is a classic policy of class collaboration. Not casually on December 9, 2020, FIT-U deputy Romina Del Plá received with joy the ovation of the bourgeoisie in Congress at the end of her previous term. Actually, she has lent her services to sustain this "democracy" for the rich. They are militants who sow confidence in the super -reactionary Constitution of 1853-1994.
After the march, none of the demands for which it was called has been met, which shows that with this impotent politics, the working class cannot fight, much less win. In addition, it showed the Polo Obrero and its allies in the arch opposed to the government, as the left leg of Kirchnerism. In this way they are reissuing the pseudo-theory of "progressive bourgeois camps" which they support for the sake of "confronting the right" of Macri and Milei. This is the same policy that the reformist left raises in the Americas, which  called to vote for Petro in Colombia, who embraces the murderous generals of the military bases and the USA businessmen, the same that called to vote for Boric, who militarized under the command of the US the Araucanía of the Mapuche workers and peasants, to cite a few examples.
The policy of regimentation and discipline imposed on hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers in the Federal March enjoys the applauses of Frank García Hernández, a critical wing of Díaz Canel and the PCC, and who advises replicating this policy in Cuba to control the hungry of the July 11 uprising, many of them in the prisons of the Castro regime of the "new rich" in Havana.

Both Employed and unemployed workers must be united right now!

The policy that was imposed on the Federal March, is opposed by the vertex to the policy of the picketers movement of 2001, which surrounded supermarkets in order to eat, blocked the roads, interrupting the circulation of merchandise, disorganizing production, thus attacking property and the profit of the capitalists.
Open the road to the rebellion of the bases! The path is self-organization, assemblies, strikes and pickets with full workers' democracy and with the coordination and unity of those who fight. In the face of the hell that unemployed workers are suffering, what is needed is for their hands to be untied in order to be able to fight.
Enough of the picketers bureaucracy! As stated in the “21 Points Program” of the Picketers of the North of Salta in 2000: “4.- A) Functioning based on assemblies that make decisions and elect representatives who must be recallable when the assembly decides. B) Organizations independent of the provincial and national government, of all its agents and the employers' organizations. D) The management of the work plans, the jobs that are obtained in the private enterprises, the food bags and everything that is conquered must be under the control of the assemblies so that it is distributed to those who need it most and those who are most committed with the fight…”

Let the combats of the workers' vanguard return, which in March 2017 licked the union bureaucracy off the CGT act and took over the stage shouting "put a date on the strike..."! Let the pickets of unemployed workers that flooded the roads of the main cities throughout the country in 2001 return! Let the blockades to companies return to unite the employed with the unemployed fighting for genuine work, the distribution of working hours and a salary equal to the family basket for everyone, indexed by inflation month by month!
Against the inflationary stampede and the farce of the government's "price control" in the face of hunger... Let the combats of the unemployed workers return, surrounding the supermarkets as in 2001! We must set up committees of unemployed workers, factory delegates, heads of households, etc. to monitor the prices! Down with the trade secrets of food transnationals and marketing chains! We must expropriate the oligarchy and the cereal companies!

To win a single list of demands, the picketer movement and the unemployed have to join forces with the workers' resistance that organizes itself against the union bureaucracy with assemblies and strikes like the workers of the ARS (Rio Santiago Shipyard), the dockers of Terminal 5 in Buenos Aires port, the metal workers and teachers from Patagonia.
The battle is for the reduction of the working day, wage increases and work for all... For workers' committees in each factory and establishment to call the unemployed to fight so that all the available hands go into production! Reduction of the working day without salary reduction and one more shift in all the factories! Stop treating the unemployed like beggars! Decent work for all now! Down with job insecurity! Everyone to permanent pay-roll and under collective agreement! Nationalization without compensation and under workers' control of any factory that closes, furloughs or lays off! Health, education and decent housing based on taxes on large fortunes and the expropriation without compensation of banks, oil companies and all transnationals! Out with the IMF! No to the debt repayment!

To conquer it, we have to fight like in the Chubutazo of December 2021. There, the working class unified its forces in the face of the bosses' attack, clashing with both the treacherous bureaucracy and the government, attacking the institutions of the hated regime, servant of the monopolies. We need to resume the fight of the heroic picketers from the North of Salta in 2001, with their program for work and decent wages for all.
It is necessary to constitute immediately a NATIONAL STRUGGLE COORDINATOR OF EMPLOYED, UNEMPLOYED AND UNTEGISTERED AND PRECARIZED WORKERS, with base delegates with a mandate, so that the great energy displayed by the unemployed comrades does not dissipate until a new march. That is the way to impose the GENERAL STRIKE, on the rubble of the union and picketer bureaucracy, to defeat the government of the capitalists. This is the way to prevent the working class from paying for the catastrophe that is already here. Only in this way will the great energy of the unemployed comrades be directed towards the conquest of their demands.

In the face of the attack by the Fernandezes government that persecutes militant activists and workers it is a question of life and death… Let's fight for the unconditional freedom of all prisoners for fighting! Workers and popular self-defense committees right now!

ENOUGH OF TRADE UNION AND PICKETER BUREAUCRACY! We must return to the path of the 1969 Cordobazo and of the 2001... Let's conquer a victorious Argentinazo to expel the IMF! Only the working class freeing itself will free the nation from imperialist plunder.
The fight against imperialism and for the rupture with the IMF can only be waged together alongside the Latin American workers and peasants of Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia and the working class and the black movement of USA. There is our greatest ally, in the bowels of the imperialist beast, to break with the IMF and conquer the land for the workers and the poor people.

Argentina will be a socialist or a colony of the IMF!