When people talk about "unnecessarily employed people"- I always wonder- have you ever met, or talked to, any of these people?
I know a fair amount of people who have lost jobs, or had hours cut, as a result of Milei cuts.
In terms of outright firing, I dont think he fired very many people.
He was able, late last year, administratively, to not renew the contracts of many first year government employees- usually there is a year of contract work before you get regular salaried postions.
In December of last year, he did this with 5000 employees.
The administration of Argentine President Javier Milei says the government won’t renew contracts for more than 5,000 employees hired this year before he took office.
apnews.com
these were all first year hires. I can find no information about what jobs these were.
Then, in early May, he was able to do a similar thing- not renew contracts, not rehire temporary or part time workers.
there are some accounts that this affects up to 24,000 employees.
Again, very little info online as to who these workers were- I do know a bunch worked for the Womens Ministry.
I, personally, have known a bunch of people who were let go, or just ceased to get gig jobs, almost all in education and culture.
Many of these may be included in his 24,000 number.
In some cases, he just cut budgets to govt departments, or semi-independent entities, such as the Universities, the Libraries, and cultural organisations like INCAA.
I have met several people who worked at INCAA, doing things like projectionists, graphic designers, and people who managed and preserved old film, or programmed films in schools and prisons.
I know people who worked at musuems and arts exhibition spaces who are out of work.
Some were "appointed" level workers, who resign, typically, when a new government comes in, allowing the government to appoint new people, or, often, the same people back in their old jobs. I know a high level curator who is now unemployed. They were working 3 jobs, none of them paying much, and all 3 dried up, and they are now doing lower paid freelance work.
All the cultural and educational workers I know earned very little, and typically put in far more hours than they were paid.
I had a friend who made a tiny stipend as a board member of the Fondo Nacional de Artes, which gives tiny grants to artists and arts organisations. He always spent more of his own money driving around and going to meetings around the country, than he was paid for this position, and the small seed money they gave to organisations totalled very little, but made a great deal happen. The FNA is in limbo right now, with most of the board gone, and Milei threatening to close it completely.
Many of these organisations, like the Museo Latinoamericano, or INCAA, or the FNA, have large libraries and collections, which need to be preserved in controlled conditions, and managed by professionals, or the film, photos, textiles, and objects may decay or disentagrate.
It seems truly misguided to me to allow these collections to vanish, to save what is, in the greater scheme of things, a very tiny part of the budget.
Mass layoffs at the national library and the defunding of a critical film institute are just the beginning, the administration has promised
www.theartnewspaper.com
UBA, for example, is integral to all kinds of income producing sectors of the Argentine economy, and cutting its budget will have major ramifications, in terms of many other businesses and sectors, far beyond the "savings".
Again, all the people I know who teach at UBA have to have "real" jobs to live- they teach sometimes at multiple schools, because they think its important, not for the tiny salaries.
The heads of departments might make (before Milei) $500 a month for jobs that in Europe or North America would be $150k to $300k annually. I had one friend who taught at UBA, La Plata, and in another state school, in Architecture, and, in total, made less than an encargado, and without his private sector work, would not have survived. This is pretty typical- almost all the professors have other jobs to live on.
The real "noquis", wherever they are, are not the ones losing jobs in these two rounds.
