(Buenos Aires) Among the multi-weekly demonstrations in Buenos Aires against the erosion of purchasing power, a “funeral” was celebrated on Friday, with announcements in the press, coffins and wreaths in the street, for the minimum wage “killed” by inflation.
Posted yesterday at 5:37 p.m.
“VITAL, Minimum, QREP”, (May he rest in peace) read an announcement on Friday in the middle of the very serious obituary page in the daily The Nation. “Locals and workers across the country are deeply saddened to announce the death of the minimum living wage.”
The announcement announced a vigil of the body in the afternoon Plaza de Mayo, in front of the presidency, where less than a thousand people converged, the third mobilization in less than a week against the cost of living and inflation which is soaring, to 42.6% since the start of the year, 71% over one year.
Dressed in black, carrying candles, the demonstrators, at the call of various social organizations and left-wing movements, laid a large coffin at the foot of the presidency, in the middle of wreaths of flowers, under a large banner “The salary is dead “.
“In Argentina, there are many workers below the poverty line […] The living and mobile minimum wage is dead, it has been pulverized by economic policy,” Marianela Navarro, of the FOL (Front of Struggle Organizations), one of the organizers of the demonstration, told AFP.
Many left-wing organizations are insistently demanding a massive increase in the minimum wage, from 45,540 pesos (about 415 Canadian dollars) to 105,000 pesos (958 CAD), in an attempt to catch up with inflation.
The discontent and the demand for strong measures have recently extended to traditional trade union movements allied with the government, without however explicitly attacking it.