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Argentina: Milei wants a country of slaves

A historic attack on the gains of the working class. Editorial from “El Círculo Rojo”
Fernando Rosso (The Left Daily) 15 December 2025

The labor reform that Javier Milei sent to the Senate is not a “technical” intervention in the labor market: it is a comprehensive political plan to cheapen labor, discipline unions and all forms of organization or protest, and transform the whole of society into a docile workforce at the service of creditors and large economic groups

The core of the project is clear: company-level collective bargaining agreements that can fall below industry-wide agreements, dismantling the historical foundation of rights won by entire branches of the labor movement. Wages tied to “productivity” and employer evaluations, turning a growing portion of salaries into discretionary bonuses. “Flexible” work schedules with banked hours allow companies to concentrate 10 or 12 hours of work when needed and send employees home when they are “surplus.” Vacations are fragmented according to the employer's convenience. Severance payments are cheaper, calculated on a “normal and usual” salary previously broken down into variable bonuses. And, to top it all off, a package of tax breaks, forgiveness of fines, and a fund for the State itself to subsidize company severance payments, while emptying other coffers (for example, the National Social Security Administration).

But it's not just about pay and working hours. The bill directly attacks the right to organize and fight. Assemblies are rigidly regulated: only leadership can call them, with prior notice and without "affecting" production; hours worked are deducted. Union protections are curtailed. The list of "essential services" is expanded to the point of absurdity, requiring a 75% level of activity and making a general strike harder than, I don't know, traveling to Mars. Millions in sanctions and fines are authorized against organizations that block, slow down, or affect production. The message is simple: you want to work, shut up; if you protest, you'll be punished.

Lawyer Luis Campos clearly summarizes this in four key points: strengthening the employer's unilateral power in individual labor relations; restricting collective action by limiting strikes and assemblies; fragmenting negotiations to the company level to undermine industry-wide collective bargaining agreements; and defunding unions to weaken the collective body that can still resist. This is not a reform for those without rights, but a direct attack on those who still have them, with even worse indirect effects on everyone else.

The big official lie—repeated by business spokespeople and quite a few establishment “experts” —is that such a rollback of rights is the price to pay for creating “formal” jobs and combating precarious employment. These kinds of reforms don't contain a single provision that improves the situation of the half of the workforce that currently has no labor rights whatsoever. They weren't designed for that half; their objective is to lower the standards for those who still have collective bargaining agreements, relative job security, and union representation.

Much of the international economic literature confirms that there is no relationship between the level of labor protection and the unemployment rate. ILO studies reviewing decades of data conclude that the “rigidity” of employment protection regulations does not explain variations in unemployment. A recent study of sixteen European countries shows that making employment protection more flexible (making dismissals cheaper, facilitating temporary contracts) has no significant impact on the level of employment or the unemployment rate: the determining factor is economic growth, not the ease of dismissal.

National experience also leaves no room for doubt. The labor counter-reforms of the 1990s coincided with a historic surge in unemployment, the rise of informal work, and the emergence of an entire unemployed workers' movement. In other words, pure "fallacy," Milei would say.

The macroeconomic context fully reveals the true nature of the plan. The National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) reported that November's inflation was 2.5%, a slight acceleration compared to October, but the key issue lies elsewhere: wages are lagging behind, collective bargaining agreements are trailing the inflation rate, and pensions are adjusted according to a scheme tailored to the IMF's demands. The loss of purchasing power has become the cornerstone of Milei and Caputo's program. With housing, electricity, gas, and transportation rates rising above the average, the stability they are selling is the stability of misery.

At the same time, Luis Caputo is “celebrating” his return to the markets by issuing a dollar-denominated bond at an effective rate of 9.26%, one of the highest in the world. The government is selling this issuance as a sign of confidence, but what it really shows is desperation: taking on new, extremely expensive debt under local law to pay immediate maturities on a previous debt that is already unpayable. It's the same old mechanism: debt to pay debt, austerity to pay interest, and greater dependence on the IMF and speculative funds.

The "slave-like" labor reform and the usurious bond are part of the same scheme. To guarantee creditors that the country will pay every last dollar, they need a disciplined labor market, eroded wages, weakened unions, cheap dismissals, and no collective resistance. They want to legally enshrine the "right" to super-exploit workers, in order to financially protect bondholders' right to collect. A country where the only contracts that are respected are debt agreements, not labor contracts.

Faced with this plan of social warfare, the CGT leadership is late, inadequate, or not at all responding. It calls “emergency” meetings after months of silence, announces marches without strikes while indulging in backroom deals with governors and legislators, and relies on negotiations that have already failed time and again. Only when the bill is already drafted, submitted, and endorsed by the inner circle do they declare that it's necessary to “start building strength.” At this rate, the law will be enacted long before they finish “assessing the context.”

This December 18th will be the first mobilization, which began to be organized from the ground up in internal committees, delegate bodies, student centers, and social and human rights organizations. The CGT (General Confederation of Labor) issued its own call to action, and we must be there, and we will be there. Now, it wouldn't be honest of us if we didn't say that a war plan of this nature cannot be stopped with a parade or a ceremony.

Symbolic caravans and indignant statements are not enough. If we truly want to stop the reform, we need to break the truce, convene assemblies in every workplace, unite union members with contract workers, self-employed workers, those in precarious employment, and the unemployed; discuss in each sector what this law means and how to confront it. And, on that basis, impose a sustained general strike, part of a plan of action to bring down the labor reform, the repressive penal package, and the entire program dictated by the IMF. Anything less than that is just talk.

It's not just a fight to preserve what's left. It's a dispute over what kind of country we're going to have in the coming decades: one of indebted slaves or one of workers who decide their own destiny.
https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Milei-quiere-un-pais-de-esclavos

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