MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine Security Minister tells CGT to “go to work”

“Stop fucking around,” Bullrich told the strike's organizers who boycotted public transport services so that the stoppage would be larger

Argentine authorities said 40% of the buses were running as the General Labor Confederation (CGT) staged its second strike against the administration of President Javier Milei to protest against his “chainsaw” economic measures that have dwindled people's incomes.

Security Minister Patricia Bullrich dubbed the measure “the strike of weakness” while Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni spoke of over 3,000 extortion calls from labor groups to transport companies to halt their services so that workers not adhering to their mesure de force would still be unable to show up at their jobs.

Bullrich also warned about mafia-style attacks against the bus company DOTA (which Milei's father Norberto is said to co-own and remained undeterred by the stoppage) and urged the CGT to drop their act: “Stop fucking around and go to work,” the minister said.

Federal forces freed blockades in the Pacheco area northwest of Buenos Aires or at Puerto San Martin in the San Lorenzo complex in the province of Santa Fe where over 10 ships were waiting to dock, Bullrich also stressed. “The idea is that people have the freedom to work and that no mafioso can interrupt it,” she maintained.

“There were corners where bus drivers were attacked with stones and where they punctured tires with nails, and there were shock forces of the Truck Drivers Union preventing workers from entering the factories in Pacheco, San Lorenzo, and San Martín,” Adorni concurred.

“We have detected that there are already more than 2300 units on the street, about 40% of what is a normal day of transport, Transport Secretary Franco Mogetta claimed.

Adorni recalled that victims could always call the 134 line for anonymous complaints about extortions or compelling actions to join the strike whereby the CGT seeks to stop the Senate from passing the so-called Omnibus Law bill (officially known as ”The Bases Law”) which has already been approved at the Lower House and would give the Executive a series of tools to reform the economy, albeit at the expense of traditional labor rights and working conditions and other measures detrimental to employees.

In the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA), suburban trains, subways and most of the bus lines stopped running as of midnight, it was reported. There are also no banks and the rest of the activities depended on the workers' adherence to the strike or ultimately their ability to make it to their workplaces.

Federal and Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA) officials also reported the strikers used M-shaped nails to puncture tires and keep buses from running. CABA Security Minister Waldo Wolff pledged to “bring the mafias” to justice and insisted the agitators also used stones to halt public transport units.

“From the City, we are going to accompany, every day, those who work and we are going to bring to justice the mafias that squeeze and extort,” Wolff stressed.