A-Infos (en) Argentina, FORA, Organizacion-Obrera #101: UNIONS, PUBLIC MEDIA WORKERS IN A STATE OF ALERT (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The workers of the Public Media are in a state of alert, due to the 
situation that the current government tries to impose by dint of decrees 
and draft laws, which do nothing but undermine the precarious existence 
of many workers, and in greater measure to those who are under contracts 
confined to aggravated exploitation conditions. ---- For this reason, it 
is necessary to emphasize that everything issued in labor matters and on 
the execution of companies under state administration would lead to a 
higher extreme than that precariousness, bordering on returning to a 
state of slavery or reduction to servitude.

The fraudulent types that the National State establishes are those of 
contract employees (monotributistas) and temporary employees. Contracted 
employees are in the most fragile link of the chain because they do not 
receive any contribution or specific hours, and are subject to 
non-renewal or termination of their contracts. Hopefully, these 
contracts are renewed annually, but it can take up to months (as happens 
during the summer) that the colleagues do not receive any income during 
that period, working for free, until their situation is "resolved."

In addition to being paid less, they are the ones who are currently 
being fired, due to the action or omission of not wanting to renew 
contracts yet, or the companies not addressing their situation. 
Something similar, but in a forceful way, was when the Cambiemos 
government barely took office in the National Executive, firing those 
hired who had been in that modality for years (many reaching a decade 
under that figure).

On the other hand, temporary workers do not enjoy greater day-to-day 
"benefits" (or rather rights) other than receiving social contributions 
and earning a little more than those hired. For both of them, if they 
don't work, because they get sick, or because the same company doesn't 
call them, they don't get paid. For this reason, several times, the 
salary is undermined, reaching half or zero in value, whether or not 
there is an explanation (e.g. due to operational issues, time 
availability, etc.). Where there is, it is an excuse without any type of 
logic, which demonstrates the extent of going against the livelihood of 
workers and going against both labor laws, communication laws and the 
service itself. A plain and simple emptying, which has been practiced 
systematically in recent years, and which serves as an excuse for the 
new administration by passing us by and leaving the population without 
Public Media and the workers without jobs. Reason and relationship of 
utmost importance.

It is worth highlighting the work of media such as Public Radio, which 
during the pandemic has been an essential link in the transmission of 
knowledge in various parts of the country, as mandatory basic education 
was affected in places where there was no direct internet connectivity 
or, As also happened, the case of families that only had a telephone or 
device to access the network, leaving the other school-age members 
without options.

Another important point, and not a minor one, is that Public Media have 
a social role of vital value in rural areas or long distances with 
terrain that is difficult to navigate. That is why the call or 
notification to the resident must be highlighted, where not even the 
telephone lines can work, to communicate any emergency, the status of 
routes and roads; the call to the harvest or the call for port workers, 
demonstrating its fundamental, if not basic, function of the economy of 
workers in areas of greater complexity to work and function. It remains 
to clarify the vaccination campaigns, awareness raising in the case of 
the mosquito that transmits Dengue, Equine Encephalitis and many other 
essential information for the care and well-being of the population as a 
whole.

Before closing this example of the current situation and the role played 
by Public Media, it is important to highlight that a public service does 
not have to be administered exclusively by the State, or be its only 
beneficiary. The character or definition that something is public is due 
to its broad and unlimited access, which can be administered by the same 
society that provides and receives it. Where also, NGOs and/or private 
companies have been organizers of said goods or services.  In history we 
find cases of public services or goods promoted by workers without 
requesting protection from governments or companies (when, generally, 
they were left aside by these sectors, as they did not represent 
economic or political returns). Thus, currently, we confuse the 
much-mentioned "absence of the State" with the lack of civil 
organization and mobilization to guarantee certain rights, maintaining a 
fallacy that the State is the same as society.

For this reason, it is necessary to highlight that destroying this 
communication network is an attack, mainly, against the working people 
as a whole, both those who receive the information and entertainment, as 
well as those of us who do the work from the most sincere effort, 
despite many obstacles that we receive, because we trust that 
information, knowledge, or, in a word, Culture, cannot and should not be 
appropriated by businessmen or politicians in power. It is something 
that for them is incommensurable and even contrary.

The bill currently submitted curtails all labor rights, reaching the 
plant workers themselves and reduces everyone equally (with Contracted 
and temporary workers) to semi-slavery without any guarantee of 
continuity of work and daily sustenance. Much less compensation. For 
this reason, we salute the gestures of the conscious and mobilized 
population in this context of attack (discursive and even physical) to 
those of us who depend on our work, and others in the same condition 
also depend. It is an offense to the group of workers who are the ones 
who create and maintain the livelihood, along with the wealth, of this 
world. Now, more than ever, is when we must expand the bonds of 
solidarity, provided in the ways that our ingenuity helps us through 
this adversity that the always powerful want to make us pay.

HEALTH, STRENGTH AND RESISTANCE!

https://organizacion-obrera.fora.com.ar/2024/01/08/trabajadores-de-los-medios-publicos-en-estado-de-alerta/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en