President Javier Milei fired his Secretary of Labor, Omar Yasin, this Monday, blaming him for the salary increases in the Executive Branch that sparked the controversy this weekend in Argentina. On Saturday, an opposition representative revealed that the president had signed a decree to increase his salary and that of his entire cabinet by 48% between January and February, contradicting his austerity speech in the midst of an economic adjustment that has triggered inflation and prices have increased while Argentines' salaries have stagnated. Milei, who first blamed the increase on an old decree by former president Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015), stated this morning in a television interview that the signing of the decree was a mistake by Yasin, and that he had already signed another to roll back the increase. Later, live, he claimed to have relegated the secretary from his duties. “When did he fire him?” the journalist who was interviewing him asked him in surprise. “At this moment they are notifying it. “It is a mistake that he should not have made,” stated the president.
The dismissal of Yasin has been the way in which Milei has tried to close the great controversy that on Saturday escalated to a fight on social networks against former president Kirchner. On Saturday at noon, Peronist deputy Victoria Tolosa Paz published the increases on X (formerly Twitter) along with some local media. Milei, who just days before had forced his vice president and president of the Senate, Victoria Villarruel, and the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Martín Menem, to suspend the increase in legislators' allowances, defended himself by arguing that the increase was automatic due to a decree promulgated by Cristina Kirchner in 2010.
“Every day that passes we find a new rule that favored politicians and harmed Argentines,” said the president. “Admit that you signed, got paid and they caught you,” replied the former president, who accused him of wanting to divert attention from her decree by blaming her. The brawl ended with the president threatening Kirchner with taking away her privileged retirement, since she “saw her very concerned” about the income of Argentines.
In June 2010, Cristina Kirchner signed a decree that modified the collective bargaining of salaries for Public Administration workers. In its fourth article, the decree established that the higher authorities – the president, the vice president, and his cabinet, including from the ministers to the undersecretaries – should receive a salary update equivalent to that calculated for the managers of the permanent staff of State workers, according to the majority collective agreement of public sector workers. On January 26, Milei signed a decree to annul this salary update. At the end of February, however, she signed another one that did authorize that month's increase. The same thing happened in Congress: a 2011 resolution established a salary increase for national legislators, and at the end of February Villarruel and Menem authorized the 30% increase that the president ordered to be rolled back at the end of last week.
Milei wanted to point out someone responsible for the oversight even though his responsibility in signing the decree is not clear. Yes, the drama that an increase in state salaries can unleash is. Argentina ended 2023 with the highest year-on-year inflation in the world, at 211%, and prices have skyrocketed since Milei took power on December 10: the Consumer Price Index climbed 25.5% that month, another 20 .6% in January, and this Tuesday the figure for last month will be known. The income of Argentines, meanwhile, has been pulverized.
According to estimates from observers ranging from private companies, union centers and the Ministry of Labor itself, formal employees have lost between 25% and 17% of their income since Milei imposed a devaluation in December. These, however, are the most privileged: only formal employees and union members negotiate their salary update due to inflation, while almost half of Argentine workers live informally and without legal protection. Members of the State Workers Association (ATE), for example, had negotiated a 16% salary increase for January. Retirees are living their own drama: the minimum they earn today is about $120, and their next increase, scheduled for March, will raise it to just $158 while inflation continues to climb.
“We, in the month of January, gave the order that the salaries of hierarchical personnel, political positions, were not going to be increased. When the first increase was given, of 16%, it was not given to political officials,” Milei stated this morning. “What happens next is that a joint agreement is reached, there is a new increase in salaries, and a decree that Cristina had sent is triggered,” said the president on the television channel La Nación +. Later, after stating that this month they will deduct the increase he received in February, he stated that his government continues “with this position that everyone pays for the adjustment… especially politics.”
The controversy of the weekend has not yet revealed its entire tail. Milei hopes that in these months her great scrapping law that was defeated in Congress in January will be discussed again, and she has sought the help of the provincial governments to once again add support despite her constant disagreements. The urgency in which the increase in salaries and his subsequent regret has plunged him can be measured in how he decided to throw cold clothes on him this Monday: the president did not wait for his spokesperson's daily conference, nor did he go – as usual – to his social networks. He also did not summon the journalists with whom he usually speaks to his office. Since he won the elections, Milei has refused to be interviewed in television studios, which made him uncomfortable in the final stretch of the campaign, and has only received journalists in the presidential palace or in the luxury hotel where he lived during months. This Monday, however, he got up early to go to a channel on his behalf.
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