If you get sick in Argentina today, your employer pays your full salary while you recover. Under President Javier Milei’s labor reform, that could drop to 50% — and that single change has brought the country to the brink of its fourth general strike in barely two years of libertarian government. This is part of The Rio Times’ daily coverage of Argentina affairs and Latin American financial news.
The General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Argentina’s most powerful union federation, announced Monday it will shut the country down for 24 hours on the exact day the lower house of Congress votes on the reform bill, likely Thursday. Every major transport union — bus drivers, railways, truckers, pilots, subway workers, and maritime crews — has pledged to join, meaning Buenos Aires will essentially stop moving.
The broader reform overhauls severance pay, working hours, strike rules, and vacation policies. But the provision that ignited open revolt is Article 44, which slashes sick-leave pay and halves coverage from twelve months to six.
Unions Test Milei Reform Limits
Each side tells a different story about why. The government points to what it calls a “mafia of fake medical certificates” and claims 15% of Argentine workers are absent on any given day — a fraud it says costs businesses billions and keeps the country trapped in informality, with six million workers off the books. Unions counter that punishing everyone for the abuses of a few is not reform but demolition of rights that took decades to build.
Sensing the backlash, Senator Patricia Bullrich, Milei’s legislative enforcer, promised over the weekend to exempt severe and degenerative illnesses, keeping full pay for those cases. But even the government’s own allies in Congress are skeptical — PRO party legislators said they want guarantees from the president himself, not just a senator’s word.
Notably, there will be no street march this time. Last week’s protest outside Congress descended into running battles — demonstrators hurling Molotov cocktails, police responding with rubber bullets and tear gas. The CGT chose a different weapon: economic paralysis without the optics of street violence.
Milei needs this law before March 1, when he delivers his State of the Nation speech. The unions need to prove they can still stop the country. What happens this week will reveal whether Argentina’s most radical economic experiment in a generation can push through its most controversial chapter yet.
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