MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Workers confirm tenth day running of subway strike in Buenos Aires

Macri: the national government’s behaviour seeks one thing only: to subjugate the Buenos Aires City”

Buenos Aires City one million commuters will be punished with yet another day, ten running, without subways as no agreement was reached between the striking workers with the Metrovias company.

The union also rejected the mandatory conciliation issued by the City Government last Thursday and the sanction that followed (approx. a million dollars) after they decided not to abide by it.

The workers on strike said they would press charges against Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri before the International Labour Organization for trying to “hinder their right to strike”. The workers lawyer Luis Ramirez said that “workers do not accept the mandatory conciliation process”.

“This is a political decision by Mauricio Macri. The right to strike is a human right that is fundamental to workers. The persecution of workers on strike is like going back a hundred years”, Ramirez assured.

He also said that the conciliation is “illegal” because it was issued by the City’s Labour Deputy Secretary, which “does not have any authority in this matter.”

They further claimed that the industrial action will continue for “an indefinite period of time”. However they said to be open, the 24 hours, to offers on salaries and working conditions from Metrovías.

Mayor Macri blamed the central government and said that “President’s Cristina Fernández attitude aimed to harm hundreds of thousands of people is just to submit them to her will, just the way she does it with journalists, provincial governors that don’t respond to the ruling-party, and the Judiciary.”

“The national government’s behaviour seeks one thing only, and that’s to subjugate the Buenos Aires City”, insisted the Mayor.

Interior and Transport Minister Florencio Randazzo also joined the debate and dismissed Macri’s words when he accused subway union leaders of working for the national government and questioned the mayor’s “stubbornness” on taking control of the subway service.

In what is considered the only semi-public reference to the subway conflict Buneos Aires media say that last week during a meeting with union leaders, President Cristina Fernandez called on them to end the strike. “Lads, stop fooling around, it’s time to lift the strike”.

However over the weekend the central government kept bashing Macri airing a TV spot released by the Nation’s Presidency during the televised football games at the state-run TV channel 7 blaming the head of the conservative PRO party for the ongoing situation as well for not investing as much as he could, not wanting to bring some new 45 train units bought by the national administration into service and let them rot away at the port’s customs, and for systematically denying to accept the management transfer of the City’s subway and tram system.

“The trains, that are still stored at the customs, arrived two years ago and have to be delivered to Metrovías by the national government as the latter is the licensor”, Macri said.

“Absurdly, the government not only refuses to deliver the new units to Metrovías, but also refuses to deposit the funds [240 million pesos] they say they have already deposited into an account they say is under the name of the City government, which is a another lie because it is illegal to open a bank account on behalf of others, the account is under the name of the national government. So, they basically refuse to deposit money in a bank account of theirs.”

After the spot was aired, the City Deputy-Mayor María Eugenia Vidal wrote on her Twitter account: “The President [Cristina Fernández de Kirchner] uses the financial resources of the Argentine State to attack Mauricio Macri. They obviously have no limits.”