Mauricio Macri in 2015. Maxi Failla / AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.
A few years ago, at the beginning of the nineties, a Peronist government began to implement an economic model that we call “neoliberal” and which was openly inimical to the interests of workers.
We watched with frustration as President Carlos Saúl Menem dismantled the public sector by privatising and denationalising state-owned enterprises - assets belonging to the Argentine people - liberalised and deregulated the economy, and eliminated trade barriers to the point of practically destroying national industry and thereby putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work. The increase in the numbers of unemployed brought about a systematic and progressive reduction in salaries because, as we know, unemployment is labour’s great disciplinarian in that it forces workers to accept precarious conditions of employment. Retirees as well as workers suffered drastic reductions in their purchasing power and, as an inevitable consequence, the internal market contracted.
