“IT CAN’T be that every annual salary negotiation makes it a strain just to begin the school year,” said President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner during a speech to Congress on March 1st. Yes it can.Strikes this week delayed the start of classes in 19 of Argentina’s 24 districts, after provincial unions and governments failed to reach agreements about wage rises. Negotiations between the national government and federal unions, which are meant to set a minimum benchmark for the provinces, also foundered. With some unions demanding more than 40% hikes, the national government and Buenos Aires’s provincial government, the most influential negotiators, offered increases of just 22% and 25.5% this year respectively. The unions called the proposals “a provocation”.Tension had been expected. The teachers’ unions want salary rises above Argentina’s galloping inflation rate. Since the start of the year the government has devalued the Argentine peso by over 20%, causing inflation expectations to spike. According to Eduardo Levy Yeyati of Elypsis, a consultancy, prices are expected to jump by 32% this year. And now that the government has started publishing more realistic data, it cannot simply pretend the problem of rising prices does not exist.The teachers’ unions have a strong hand. In December provincial police squeezed 35-100% pay increases out of their employers. Public-sector...
via The Economist: The Americas http://ift.tt/1mZ0VyD
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