MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina organized labour leader again blasts the government

The teamster chief looking for a fight with CFK

The Argentine organized labour CGT umbrella union leader Hugo Moyano once again blasted the government insisting he doesn’t understand the “fine-tuning” metaphor that President Cristina Fernández used to refer to subsidy cuts.

“When those types of phrases pop up the workers are the most affected” said Moyano on Friday referring to the president’s speech a day before.

Earlier in the day union boss Moyano shared a lunch with fellow union leaders including newspaper salesmen union leader Oscar Plaini and taxi drivers’ union leader Omar Viviani in the CGT headquarters which was open to the Buenos Aires media.

While addressing reporters, Moyano insisted that his union “always represented workers claims. That is our job and every time we have claimed we have had no replies” he added, regarding the increase of the income tax floor, family allowances, debts to medical insurance companies and scholar help, among other issues.

“We will keep on claiming,” he added and recalled that he sent a letter to President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and he is expecting a reply in the next few days.

Besides the political differences emerging from the landslide victory of President Cristina Fernandez last October ensuring her re-election which included a minimum number of candidates to Congress in representation of unions, Moyano is challenging the government’s suggestion that salary arrangements keep to an 18% roof and the profitability of each manufacturing sector.

On Wednesday President Cristina Fernández said that wage talks will have to take into account “the varying profitability levels of each sector” and announced the creation of a committee which will closely follow collective bargain.

Within an economic framework that appears more complex than previous years, the Argentine government intends to keep wage talks around 18%, while Moyano and fellow union leaders assure that wage hike can not stand below 25%.

“We will follow the supermarket index, the food prices index”, said Moyano in reference to the private sector inflation estimates, which are well above the official index from the national stats office, Indec with 9.5% for the 12 months of 2011.

On Friday the letter sent by Moyano to the Argentine president was released revealing some problems that increasingly concern workers such as the updating of family allowance payments; increasing the floor for income tax; non reported workers and others with the insufficient guaranteed by Spanish legislation.

The letter is signed by Hugo Moyano and addressed to Cristina Fernandez on January 31. Moyano also reiterated that he has had virtually no contacts with the Cristina Fernandez government for over four months, “relations are suspended”.