MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina: court demands university salary restoration amid faculty strikes

Judges Sergio Fernández and Jorge Morán rejected the executive branch's appeal and called its arguments “not serious,” including the claim that the injunction amounted to a disguised final ruling

Argentina's Federal Administrative Litigation Chamber on Tuesday upheld an injunction ordering President Javier Milei's government to immediately enforce Law 27,795 on University Funding, which mandates salary adjustments for teaching and non-teaching staff at public universities and the restoration of student scholarship programs.

Judges Sergio Fernández and Jorge Morán rejected the executive branch's appeal and called its arguments “not serious,” including the claim that the injunction amounted to a disguised final ruling. The court noted that the fiscal impact of the measure is low and that what is at stake is a constitutional right: access to public higher education.

The ruling requires compliance with articles 5 and 6 of the law, which mandate salary adjustments covering the period from December 2023 to September 2025, when the legislation was passed by Congress. Milei vetoed the law, but both chambers overrode the veto with a two-thirds majority. The president nonetheless refused to enforce it, arguing that lawmakers had not specified funding sources.

The judicial decision comes amid an escalating conflict. University unions have entered their third consecutive week of strikes and plan to set up protest camps across the country starting next week. The CONADU faculty union confederation has called for another full week of strikes in late April.

The National Inter-University Council (CIN), which filed the legal action, has reported that salaries in the sector have lost 32% of their purchasing power since December 2023, with wage increases of 158% against accumulated inflation of 280%. Restoring salaries to their previous level would require a 47.3% raise, according to the council's calculations. The country's 64 public universities, which serve 2.1 million students, declared a “salary and budget emergency” last week.

“Excellent news for the university community in the extremely difficult context we are going through,” said CIN president Franco Bartolacci. The vice-rector of the University of Buenos Aires, Emiliano Yacobitti, warned that noncompliance with the court order could constitute a case of “unprecedented institutional gravity” and potential grounds for charges of dereliction of duty by public officials. Faculty unions demanded that the government “pay its debt to teachers, non-teaching staff, and students” and warned they would not tolerate further delays.