## Public sector employees denounce that the cuts will put many state functions on hold
Javier Milei believes that the state “is the enemy” and “a criminal organization” which he seeks to reduce to its minimum size. He’s doing this amidst criticism and applause from a deeply polarized society. When he took office as president of Argentina in December 2023, the state had 341,477 people employed. Two months later, Milei’s administration had already eliminated 9,000 jobs. And, this past week, 15,000 more layoffs were ordered. New dismissals are expected in the middle of the year… but nobody knows how many jobs will be slashed, nor who will be fired.
Some 50,000 workers are living in this climate of uncertainty, most of them on temporary contracts. In the past, these non-permanent positions were renewed once a year. At the moment, these individuals know that they’ve survived the first stage, but their positions will still be under review for three or six more months.
Sounds like a great way of making all bureaucracy grind to a halt. How does he expect this will turn out, when even those who support him on this start have to spend a full day in line to renew their driver’s license or file their taxes?
Isn’t that exactly what he wants? He ran on what was basically eradication of the state.
Neoliberalism, or the pursuit of a small state through privatisation and cuts.
They’ll still be blaming the “liberal elites” after the state has completely fallen apart and society consists of nothing but roving bands of cannibals.
Depends on how many people government employed. If they have multiple people in the same positions, or in useless positions then a new government can greatly reduce public spending and free up a lot of funds.
I know my country is not Argentina, but I am from South Africa, where it is the current and ruling (for the last 30 years) government’s policy to employ people closely aligned with them, or as they like to call it cadre deployment. So many people in government are just friends here with salaries way more than the private sector, where the government employs about 2% of the population but 30% of the current budget for the whole country is allocated towards their salaries.
Don’t get me wrong, pulic sector workers do a great deal in ensuring a functional society. But what happens when a government turns this idea into a grafting scheme to enrich their friends.
Now I do not speak for Argentina, but if their previous government did the same I am with there new effort in reducing public sector wages to lower the tax burden and free up money to rather help a larger part of society than a few
Even if the state apparatus is bloated and needs to be improved, simply firing 10% of your workforce isn’t going to magically improve things (especially when done so quickly). You basically can’t know if you fire useful people or bloat. And for each “unnecessary” person you fire you also fire someone who was the only one in their department understanding their job and doing their actual work.
Agreed, but similar to how businesses retrench and let good with bad people go they do make mistakes, but hopefully they are not doing it blindly with a dart board and pictures, but rather through analysis in determining what fat they can cut and what part is muscle. I am right now as we speak in the middle of a company restructuring, where they are retrenching about 13% of employees. Won’t lie it is not nice going through it but also this is my third time going through it and on a personal note it is not fun but in a broad sense I understand why the company has to do it.
Here in Uruguay we are already fearful about what will happen. Sometimes we trend to imitate Argentina sometimes we see it as an example of what not to do…
Cuando fuimos ejemplo de que hay que hacer? Desde 1930 que solo la cagamos
Next time vote the same.
Yeah they just gotta vote harder 💀
Based
