CGT considers November strike

Argentina’smain umbrella union grouping, the CGT, is threatening to call a 36-hour strike in November, “if the government does not change course,” the confederation’s leadership announced on Thursday.

“It is very probable that we will carry out strike activity before the end of the year,” Héctor Daer, one of the CGT’s cosecretary-generals, told FM La Patriada.

“The government went to the IMF [International Monetary Fund]onitsknees”,Dearsaid.Heclaimedtheunionmovement “no longer has any room to manoeuvre.”

If it goes ahead, the strike would be the fifth general strike against President Mauricio Macri’s government since it took office in December, 2015.

Production and Labour Minister Dante Sica lamented the decision. Speaking at the IDEAs business summit in Mar del Plata, he also confirmed the government would look at implementing labour reform within the next two years.

“We hope to have sufficient maturity to discuss it in the next year or two years because, if not, we will be creating more unemployment,” he said.

“We have been working with unions as we had been previously, and this does not seem like an opportune decision given the situation we are experiencing,” Sica said, in relation to Argentina’s ongoing economic woes.

“The right to strike is constitutional. Nobody is making observations about that,” he clarified.