Argentina - October 12, 2022

The big capitalists and the government went for everything…

The tire workers put up a fight and defeated the brutal offensive that threatened to liquidate their conquests and their union, which had been recovered by the rank and file from the hands of the union bureaucracy

First conclusions of five months of a very hard witness struggle by the tire workers

On September 30, with thousands of tire workers and militant organizations in solidarity with their struggle surrounding the Ministry of Labor, they received the news that the negotiating board with the companies had ended and an agreement had been signed that satisfied the worker expectations.
Five months of what became one of the most important witness struggles that the Argentine working class has carried out in recent years have come to an end.

In December 2021, another enormous witness struggle for the entire working class had already culminated, i.e., the uprising that went so far as to burn all the government institutions such as the provincial Government House, the courts, the legislature in Chubut. The fight of the state workers and the fish fileteros(fish cutters) in Puerto Madryn and Rawson, forced the government for the first time in years to pay all the wage arrears owed to the workers.  Also it resolved, with Chubut on fire, to prevent the entry of the transnationals, and the mega-mining that for years has threatened the environment throughout the province.
The Chubutazo shows that, even to achieve the minimum demand, such as collecting overdue wages in a province devastated by the transnationals and a Monetary Fund plan, the workers had to attack and destroy the citadel of power. This was a huge witness fight,  an explosive combat that reminded the Argentine working class how it uses to fight against imperialist looting and its executioners. Quickly, today, like yesterday, the bosses' politicians and the reformist left, like the union bureaucracy, want this to be forgoten in History so they have covered it as an event that had never happened.
This Chubutazo struggle anticipated that the margins of class conciliation between the workers and the capitalists has been completely exhausted and that not even the slightest conquest could be wrestled from the exploiters, their government and their State, without very harsh combats of classes in a country totally bankrupt and plundered by imperialism and the big capitalists.
This is so because the infamous regime of the Social Pact, of state-ization of the unions, with the internal police, namely the union bureaucracy fiercely controlling the labor movement and surrendering all its gains, in a country with chronic unemployment of millions of exploited and a inflation that makes life unbearable for those at the bottom, it is no longer possible, not even to go for new conquests, but to maintain the previous ones if we don't put our foot on the capitalists'chest and threaten to take away everything as the only possibility that they give something. It's been a while since the moment of reformism has run out, it's the moment when it can no longer even pass off alms for reforms.

The tire workers enter the collective bargainings with an offensive policy, to recover what was lost due to inflation and to achieve a 200% increase in working hours on Saturdays and Sundays...

How could it be otherwise, in the Argentine maquila, with millions of unregistered, precariously hired, and unemployed workers, the tire workers found a resounding refusal from the companies to make the slightest concessions on the salary expectations of the workers to recover even with three months of delay what was already lost in the 2021-22 collective bargains and while for 2022-23 there is a forecast of more than 6% monthly inflation. And, not to mention the 200% increase in the hours worked on Saturdays and Sundays, an issue that the employers even refused to discuss in dozens of meetings at the Ministry of Labor.
In the clash with the workers, the owners of the tire companies, who have been making fortunes, were openly supported by a front of the government, the transnationals and the ruling class as a whole. In this struggle, they saw the possibility of dealing a lesson as an example for the entire working class, so it does not demand any alm that they are not willing to give and to show what happens to those who dare to defeat the traitors of the union bureaucracy: punishmet and defeat. That is also why this fight of the workers was in defense of their union taken from the traitors and strikebreakers of the union bureaucracy. Thus, to a great extent, the immediate fate of the working class was at stake in this struggle. That's what this witness fight was about.

The struggle thus became a political struggle against the government and all the capitalists

It is no coincidence that, in order to break the strike at a decisive moment, that "holy alliance" of the government, Massa, the traitors of the trade union bureaucracy of SMATA and UOM with all the metal-mechanic capitalists of the country, together with the big tire companies appeared. Those at the top centralized all their forces to defeat the much more than fair pretensions of the organized workers in the SUTNA.
There were five months of rotating strikes by shifts, by factories, by pickets, which hit the companies hard. But these, favored by a low dollar, with soft loans, etc., with a vertiginous increase in prices that made the tires almost unattainable in the domestic market, recovered day by day the losses caused by the already heroic struggle of the tire workers and their pickets, who were the real protagonists along with the enormous sacrifice of the base of this combat.
The bourgeoisie came out to meet this workers' offensive by centralizing all its forces, flatly refusing to discuss the 200% increase in working hours on Saturdays and Sundays and threatening that if the workers continued to insist on this demand they would close down production on Sunday and they would lay off a third of the workers at each plant. They tried to terrify the workers with the ghost of unemployment and what is also serious, they defined that, for the collective bargains that was ongoing, they only gave a 38% wage increase paid in installments retroactive to six months with galloping inflation going forward which is already at 7% monthly. A real provocation.

The bosses intended to grant a collective bargains, even worse than those imposed by the traitors of the union bureaucracy, where the increases are granted in quarterly installments that increase the salary retroactively, while day by day, week by week and month by month, inflation increases and thus the salary never manages to maintain its value. And this happens when it is already known that inflation will reach 95 or 110% this year and that it far exceeds all the collective bargains that have achieved higher wage increases, such as that of banks, edible oil and petroleum workers, etc. Let's be clear, with the salary in installments and retroactive, the workers always lose. This is what the collective bargains is about in this infamous regime that has nationalized the unions and regulated their claims with the consent of the traitors of the union bureaucracy who, as we see, act as true ministers without ministry of the current governments.
With this united front of traitors, the transnational tire companies, all the capitalists and the government, the 5,000 workers organized in SUTNA confronted even threatened by the government to open imports while the companies closed the factories in a true lockout. Far from retreating, the workers redoubled their forces and put up a fight. And this was the decisive blow for the workers, because they were beginning to demonstrate that a generalized struggle could be organized to defeat the hunger collective bargains, confronting the government, the capitalists. Their struggle thus began to win the sympathy of broad sectors of the working class. It was this key issue that put on the scale the necessary weight of the workers so that their struggle is not defeated.
Thus, after five months of harsh clashes, the struggle seemed to reach an impasse, the bosses withdrew from the negotiation and announced a lock-out and closure of companies and already threatened massive dismissals. The response was immediate, with an indefinite general strike of the three plants, with pickets and surrounding the Ministry of Labor for days, the working class rose to the height of the blow launched by the capitalists. The battle turned decisive. Hundreds of thousands of workers began to see this struggle as theirs and day after day it aroused more and more sympathy, especially in sectors such as ports or teachers who are leading very tough and heroic isolated struggles these days.
The economic struggle had already jumped to the political struggle, that is what the indefinite strike was about, where Massa and the government, the union bureaucracy and the bosses were on one side and the union and its workers on the other.

The bosses launched a final blow when they thought that the strength of the workers was exhausted but the latter replied by multiplying their response by a thousand... the base was willing not to return to the conditions of wage slavery to which it was being subjected. The base imposed its war cry in the streets that could quickly spread to hundreds of thousands and millions of workers: “the union belongs to the workers, let the bosses pay for the crisis”, openly attacking the Peronist government and insulting its Economy Minister, elevating this fight to a political fight against the government and publicly denouncing the traitors of the union bureaucracy of the Argentine CGT that, at the last moment, sent one of its men so to appear as mediators in this conflict, when in reality, they were always with the bosses, attacking and surrounding the workers who had just fought an enormous struggle for more than five months.

This is what the true victory of the tire workers is about, who managed to demonstrate to the entire working class that, in order to succeed, you have to confront the government, the union bureaucracy and all the capitalists. That was imposed by the rank and file and that is the merit. Beyond the fact that the 200% wage increase in hours on Saturdays and Sundays has not been achieved, beyond the fact that the wage limit imposed by the employer was broken, although it is still insufficient to level the wage that will continue to be charged in installments backward and running behind inflation, we affirm that the workers were able to obtain the minimum demand only by fighting for everything. They have their forces intact to make a call to group and extend their struggle to the most courageous sectors of the Argentine working class and thus open the conditions to organize and prepare the next decisive victories, which cannot be other than conquering, together with the entire working class, the defeat of the Social Pact of the government, the bosses and the union bureaucracies and fighting to conquer the minimum, vital and mobile salary that today it is $260,000 pesos, the equivalent of the family shopping basket, indexed monthly with a trigger clause. Only in this way it will be possible to definitively recover the standard of living that working families need to survive. That is what the victory of the tire workers is all about, showing the working class that it can push back, confront and even forced to endure something to the bosses when they try to liquidate their conquests and that this must be done with decisive struggles. Going out to fight going for everything, unifying the claims, breaking the isolation that the union bureaucracy imposes on us in each fight and putting up a single claim of all employed and unemployed workers.
So that, when the bosses threaten to fire us if we don't want to work in conditions of slavery on Saturdays and Sundays, we can tell them that, in that case, with the living and mobile minimum wage, one more shift will have to be imposed to work 6 hours in all the factories, because there is more than enough money and profits that the looters of the nation take away by getting the dollars out.

Because of the battle they put up, pushing back the employers' association that was coming for all the conquests and for the union. Because their struggle opens up the prospect of regrouping the ranks of the workers under a new program that attacks the capitalists, this is what the triumph of the tire workers and their union recovered from the hands of Wasiejko and other scoundrels sold out of the Peronist union bureaucracy is all about.
Generalizing these experiences of combat, such as that of the Chubutazo of 2021, is key to setting up a Coordinator of all the workers who are fighting and to conquering a National Congress of grassroots delegates of employed and unemployed workers with a mandate, to set up a single list of claims of the labor movement, for the sliding scale of wages and working hours. To centralize the fight against the traitors of the union bureaucracy as they concentrate to defeat our struggles and thus open the way to the General Strike to defeat this government, the capitalists and this infamous regime of imperialist colonization of our oppressed nation.

"Sergio Massa botón (scumbag)..."
"Workers Union, let the bosses pay for the crisis"
“No, no production”
“Where is that famous CGT????”
Open the road to those who fight! An injury to one is an injury to all!