Argentina Minimum Wage: CGT Refuses to Rule Out a General Strike

ARGENTINA · MINIMUM WAGE

The fight over the Argentina minimum wage has moved from a collapsed meeting to the threat of a national shutdown. The CGT, the country’s largest labor federation, now openly declines to rule out a general strike, while the government prepares to impose a new wage floor by decree within days.

Update: This article follows our 29 August report on the union walkout that left President Milei to set the minimum wage by decree. That report cited an employer opening offer of about 400,000 pesos (about US$268) and the current wage floor of 376,600 pesos (about US$253). The new details below — the full employer path to April 2027, the CGT’s strike warning and the government’s timetable — have emerged since.

From walkout to strike warning

The Wage Council, the body where government, business chambers and unions are meant to agree on adjustments to the Salario Mínimo, Vital y Móvil (SMVM), met on Friday for the first time this year — by video call, against the unions’ wish for an in-person session. It broke up almost immediately. The CGT and the two CTA federations rejected the employers’ proposal as “irrisoria”, derisory, and left the call, denying the council its quorum.

On Saturday, CGT co-secretary general Cristian Jerónimo went on the radio to explain the walkout — and to raise the stakes. “They offered us 468,000 pesos (about US$314) only in April next year. We are not going to rubber-stamp it, we are not going to the plenary and they will not have quorum,” he told Radio Con Vos. Asked about the next steps, he declined to rule out a general strike and said the CGT leadership will meet next week to build a plan of action “with consensus and forcefulness”.

The full employer offer, now public in detail, consists of a 1.8 percent increase for September followed by 1.7 percent monthly increments. That path would lift the minimum wage from 376,600 pesos (about US$253) today to 468,000 pesos (about US$314) only by April 2027. The unions’ unified counter-proposal demands 911,202 pesos (about US$611) immediately, rising to 993,300 pesos (about US$667) in December — nearly double the employers’ trajectory. All peso-dollar conversions in this article use the wholesale rate of about 1,490 pesos per US dollar (BCRA wholesale close, mid-August 2026).

Why the Argentina minimum wage fight matters

The SMVM is more than a floor for formal paychecks. In a country where roughly four in ten workers are informal, it anchors unemployment benefits and serves as the reference price for millions of off-the-books jobs. When it falls behind prices, a large share of Argentine society falls with it.

And it has fallen far behind. The Interdisciplinary Institute of Political Economy (IIEP) at the University of Buenos Aires calculates that the minimum wage lost more than 40 percent of its purchasing power between November 2023 and July 2026. Social organizations note that the official poverty line for a typical family was measured at 1,276,649 pesos (about US$857) late last year — more than three times the minimum wage.

The deadlock is structural. The Wage Council has not produced a single agreement since Javier Milei took office in December 2023. Each failure ends the same way: the government fixes the new wage by decree, as it did in November 2025 with a schedule of monthly increases that ran through August of this year. The Human Capital Ministry has already confirmed the sequel: “Given the impossibility of reaching an agreement between the parties, the national government will proceed to issue its award.” Officials told local media the decree takes about five days.

“A show”: unions clash with the government

Jerónimo’s sharpest criticism targeted the format, not just the numbers. The CGT had asked for the meeting to be held in person; the government refused. “There is no excuse not to meet face to face and build a much more credible debate,” he said. “Otherwise we keep feeding a show the government wants to mount, in which nothing is really discussed or debated.”

The union leader also crossed swords with Deregulation Minister Federico Sturzenegger, who had celebrated on social media the creation of more than 500,000 jobs under Milei. Jerónimo called that a “parallel reality” and countered with his own figures: 180,000 jobs destroyed, more than 30,000 companies closed, and new work pushed into informality. Independent analysts describe a two-speed economy in which export sectors boom while domestic employers struggle.

He also seized on a recent remark by President Milei, who suggested that many indebted households had borrowed to buy a television to watch the World Cup. “It is madness,” Jerónimo said. “A large part of our society goes into debt to eat, not to buy a luxury.”

What comes next for the Argentina minimum wage

Two clocks are now ticking. The first is the decree: within days the Casa Rosada will publish the new wage floor, and the distance from the employers’ offer will signal how much the government wants to spend on social peace. The second is the CGT’s leadership meeting next week, which will decide whether the strike warning becomes a date.

Argentina has already lived through four general strikes since Milei took office, and the Argentina minimum wage has been a recurring trigger. The most recent stoppage, in February, paralyzed transport, banks, schools and flights for 24 hours against the government’s labor reform and ended with clashes between protesters and police outside Congress. A fifth strike over pay would land as annual inflation still runs above 30 percent — and as the government insists the worst of the adjustment is over.

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Sources: Ámbito Financiero; Crónica; Todo Noticias; Bloomberg Línea; IIEP (UBA-CONICET); Buenos Aires Herald; France 24.

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