Martina Jaureguy Academic and administrative staff at Argentina’s public universities have launched a 24-hour strike to protest the Lower House’s vote to support President Javier Milei’s veto on a bill that would have granted them a funding increase.
The National Universities Union Front — which brings together several university professors’ unions — called for their members to go on strike on Thursday and redouble their demands for higher salaries and a larger budget for universities.
“The people’s will has been defrauded, and democracy has given in to the antirepublican way of ruling by decree,” the unions said in a release. “There is a new political alliance that is incapable of being moved by people’s suffering, and the demands to maintain something fundamental: public university and education.”
Argentine university staff have been suffering from crippling wage stagnation since the change of government as Milei allows salaries to stagnate against rampant inflation, part of his aggressive scheme of public sector cuts. On Tuesday, the Human Capital Ministry announced a 6.8% pay rise for university workers, but unions said they needed a raise of at least 63.5% — the purchasing power they’d lost since Milei took office.
Over 30 teachers and researchers from the University of Buenos Aires’s Agronomy Faculty resigned recently as the wage crisis worsens, the institution said in a statement.
Milei clinched another major win in Congress on Wednesday afternoon as the Lower House upheld his presidential veto on a university financing bill that had been approved in the Upper and Lower houses. It would have updated university budgets based on inflation to date and established pay rises for staff every two months to account for inflation.
Most deputies rejected Milei’s veto, but the opposition failed to gather the special two-thirds majority required to overturn a presidential block. The veto prevailed with 160 deputies in favor of overturning it, 85 against, and 5 abstentions.
The bill, which had initially been approved by the Lower House in August and by the Senate in September, included a budget raise for universities and staff salary increases tied to inflation.
Images posted on social media showed hundreds of students inside the rectorate building of La Plata National University (UNLP by its Spanish initials) minutes before midnight. They plan to stay there indefinitely.
The same is happening in faculties across Argentina. Students and staff occupied La Matanza University for the first time in its history on Wednesday. Founded in 1989, this university in the outskirts of Buenos Aires does not have a student political tradition of major protests and occupations, unlike larger counterparts such as UNLP and the University of Buenos Aires
In other universities that have not been occupied, students have been holding assemblies and other types of protests against Milei’s veto and his decision to defund universities.
On Thursday, Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni thanked the 85 deputies who backed Milei’s veto, accusing the opposition of using the bill to “bring chaos back.” He also criticized university staff for rejecting their proposed pay raise. “They preferred to reject the raise and allow the university occupations instead of accepting it and continuing to work to make their economic situation better,” he said.
Former President and Vice President Cristina Kirchner harshly criticized Peronist deputies who abstained or were absent during the vote, as well as Peronist governors Osvaldo Jaldo (Tucumán) and Raúl Jalil (Catamarca) for “pressuring some lawmakers from their provinces to join the strategy to back Milei’s veto.”
