MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine pro-government unions don’t trust Cristina’s stats and official inflation

Anti-Moyano union leaders meet with Cristina Fernandez

Despite having managed to split organized labour and declared war on its most powerful exponent the teamsters boss Hugo Moyano, the government of Argentine president Cristina Fernandez still has to deal with its unconvincing stats office and rampant inflation.

Labour leaders who oppose the powerful CGT chief Hugo Moyano met on Monday with Cristina Fernandez at Government House but in spite of the good chemistry, they did not yield in the issue and said they did not trust the official stats from the government’s Statistics and Census Institute, Indec.

“I don’t believe in the Indec at all” said Andres Rogriguez head of the public employees union who revealed that at the meeting with the president in Casa Rosada “we were not specific about any issue, but rather the door was opened for negotiations on current and pending issues in the near future”.

“We’re not going to pull the rope, so it breaks” said Rodriguez after stating that in discussions with government “you need to be cautious”. Formally the anti Moyano union leaders that met with Cristina Fernandez talked about labour movement’s demand for a higher income taxing floor, making family allowances universal and the recovery of part of the unions’ social works funds.

The reference to Indec coincides with the demands from Moyano and the CGT who on taking office for another period as chairman anticipated the labour organization would elaborate its own cost of living index to keep track of real inflation, “and not the government’s manicured index”.

“We left the meeting very satisfied” said Rodríguez. President Cristina Fernandez promised the dissident labour leaders a “normalizing” election of CGT for next 3 October and that in August the government would convene all sides to begin talks on the minimum, vital and mobile salary. The unions have advanced they will be demanding a 25% increase for the minimum salary.

Rodriguez said he has no problem in aligning with the government of Cristina Fernandez and accepted to be included in an “official CGT” which will be contrary to Moyano and his CGT.

“The official government line does not bother me; we support in general what we consider a positive model for the workers, but there are pending issues such as including unregistered workers. We’re here not for labels but working for solutions”, said Rodriguez.