Students, professors, and workers at universities in Argentina are preparing for several weeks of mobilizations and work stoppages to protest Milei’s announced veto of the University Financing Law which seeks to allocate much needed funds to universities. The university community has called for a strike on September 26 and 27 and a national mass mobilization on October 2 in cities across the country, in Buenos Aires, people will march to the National Congress. Trade unions and social organizations from across sectors will also join students, professors, and university workers to defend public, free, and quality education in Argentina and once again protest against Milei’s neoliberal austerity plan which has impacted all working people in Argentina.
On Thursday, September 12, the Argentine Senate approved a law that updates the amount of money universities should receive to maintain optimal functioning; this includes slightly improving the budget allocation to cover current expenses for teaching, research, and administrative functioning. According to the law, the budget increase would be only 0.14% of GDP.
Despite this, the neoliberal government of Javier Milei, which has already done everything possible to reduce fiscal spending even at the expense of education, has announced that it will veto the law. Indeed, according to some official sources, the government plans to offer only 3.8 billion pesos to the national universities, when in fact, according to the National Interuniversity Council (CIN), at least 7.8 billion pesos are required for the country’s universities to operate properly.
According to Víctor Moriñigo, president of the CIN and rector of the University of San Luis, “there is no certain intention of adjusting teaching and non-teaching salaries [to the current economic situation] to at least equalize the situation of loss [of purchasing power] in the face of inflation. The only certainty that emerges from this budget [proposed by Milei] is that teachers and non-teachers in 2025 will have the same salaries as today, not even considering inflation, which was estimated at 18%.”
Argentina’s student unions and associations have reached a historic agreement and unity to carry out the mobilization planned for the beginning of October. Carlos De Feo, the general secretary of the National Federation of University Teachers (CONADU), told Página 12, that such agreement exists precisely because Milei’s neoliberal plan not only intends to affect specific universities but it seeks to transform the country’s public educational model into one without funding and of poorer quality.
The National Federation of University Professors – Historic (CONADU), the Trade Union Front of National Universities, and the Argentine University Federation, made up of dozens of student associations and movements, have been mobilizing for the last months for the University Financing Law to be passed by the legislature and had called for a national strike of the university community on April 23 this year in defense of public higher education. Now they are calling for mobilizations to defend the law from Milei’s veto. They will be holding a press conference on September 24 to inform about their upcoming actions.
📽️23 de abril #MarchaNacionalUniversitaria
A la Universidad Pública la defendemos entre todas y todos. pic.twitter.com/dFhIO3Kur1— CONADU Histórica (@CONADUHistorica) April 24, 2024
In a rally organized by these same platforms on September 12 to call for the Senate to approve the bill, Francisca Staiti, General Secretary of CONADU Histórica stated: “This anarcho-capitalist [Milei] is a benefactor…of the big fortunes, he is the benefactor of the big companies, and that is the model that we have to fight from here, from the university, extending our arms in unity, with massiveness, with organization…Embracing all the university and pre-university teachers throughout the country, who are also demonstrating today, extending this embrace to everyone; we are going with greater organization and greater unity because if this president, in the face of the approval of the law, vetoes it, we will be in the streets.”
