The current
right-wing coalition government
A few days after taking office, it decreed the
contraction of the state budget by 15% and that only 1 in 3 vacancies
be filled in much of the state. Then there was a five-year National
Budget, with strong fiscal adjustment. From there and with the excuse
of the pandemic, a generalized salary reduction for more than 3
years.
It is a government that went full steam ahead against
the people and immediately promoted the LUC, Law of Urgent
Consideration, with almost 500 articles that are largely repressive
and punitive, limiting the right to strike, prohibiting occupations
and pickets, with a great attack on public education.
Faced with this law, there was a great popular
battle in the streets, with strikes, mobilizations and a Referendum
against 135 articles, for which 800,000 signatures were achieved and
then with 1,078,000
votes, losing by 1.5%.
The reactionary onslaught continued in each of the
annual budget accounts and with the approval of the reactionary
Social Security Reform, which in reality is only a pension reform,
which increases the required retirement age from 60 to 65 years and
obligatorily extends the AFAPs to all savings banks and all workers
regardless of the amount of their salary.
The AFAPs are a system of individual pension savings
and imply a real emptying of the BPS (state), of US $1,200 million
per year that come out of the contributions by the workers under this
capitalist-imperialist system that imposes more and more job
insecurity and super-exploitation. The reactionary chorus then speaks
of the BPS's supposed deficit of $600 million annually.
The AFAPs are a real scam at the service of financial
capital that was imposed by the conditions of the IMF and other
imperialist agencies. They were eliminated in most of the countries
where they were established when it was seen in practice that they do
not provide services other than pensions and that in the vast
majority of cases these are very low.
This government has deepened its dependence on Yankee
imperialism and acts as a battering ram of its policy in the region
and on the continent, permanently attacking Cuba and Venezuela as
dictatorships and at the same time promoting an FTA with China, which
has been the main buyer of U.S. exports: meat, soy and cellulose in
recent years. It is a government that conceded a monopoly of loading
and unloading of containers in the port of Montevideo to the Belgian
company Katoen Natie for 50 years. It carried out the establishment
of a second plant of the Finnish paper company UPM, taking charge of
the state of a railway, road and bridge infrastructure for US $4,000
million. It is advancing
the privatization of
public companies,
breaking up the Portland plants,
and part of the fuel supplies in ports and airports,
today in
the hands of the
ANCAP [National
Administration of Fuels, Alcohols and Portland];
the same is happening with the state electric power company UTE and
the telephone company ANTEL. With OSE, the state water company, a
negotiation was approved with the construction monopolies, in the
midst of the water crisis, the Neptune project to pump water of the
Río de la Plata, which is questioned by scientists,
environmentalists and the workers' union, because it implies
privatization and the place of the occupation, Arazatí, has high
levels of salinity and pollution.
Economic situation
Due
to the crisis furthered by the pandemic, GDP fell sharply in 2020,
the first year of the current government, by -6.1%, there was a
recovery of 5.3% in 2021 and 4.9% in 2022, mainly due
to the high prices of
the main export products,
meat, soybeans and pulp and construction works.
of UPM2 and the great infrastructure that surrounds it.
In
the last two quarters of 2022, a slight technical recession was
reached and a poor GDP growth of 1.3% is expected for this year. This
reflects the "normalization" of international prices, the
serious effects of the drought that mainly affected soybeans, a large
drop in meat exports due to the drop in purchases from China and the
end of the aforementioned works. In the first half of 2023, soybean
exports fell -76% and beef exports -32%. In 2022, the main export
destinations were China (29%), the European Union (15%), Brazil
(14%), Argentina (9%) and the USA (5%).
A
factor that is greatly influencing the national economy is the
backwardness of the economy, with a dollar that depreciates against
the peso and artificially increases the production of goods and
services in the country. The basis of this problem is in the issuance
of bonds in UI (indexed units), in Uruguayan pesos that adjust for
inflation and also pay high interest, which favors the speculative
business. What successive governments have been doing with the
argument of combating inflation in fact subsidizes all types of
imports and permanently increases the public debt.
Global
public debt is around $50 billion and about $20 billion in interest.
To this we must add the indebtedness concealed by the PPP [Purchasing
Price Parity. The GDP forecast at the end of this year 2023 is US
$73,000 million.
In
these years exploitation has increased, the percentage of submerged
wages of less than $25,000 covers 33% of workers, about 550,000. 75%
of workers do not reach the average family basket [of necessary
goods], which today is $124,000, about US
$3,100. There has been an increase in job
insecurity, outsourcing and self-employment, much of which is
"informal", covering some 350,000 workers.
Poverty has increased, there are 650 irregular
settlements where some 250,000
people live and with the pandemic popular pots have become
widespread.
The current
workers' and people's struggles
March 8 – National strike of 24 hours by Women of
the PIT-CNT (labor federation).
March
23 – Partial General Strike from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. against the
government's reactionary pension reform.
April
25 – 24-hour National General Strike against the Social Security
Reform, the day it began to be voted on in Parliament.
June
27 – Partial General Strike, 50 years after the Fascist Military
Coup in commemoration of the heroic 15-day General Strike, carried
out by the CNT in 1973.
August
22 – Partial General Strike for wages, in defense of public
companies and solidarity with those in conflict.
Between
January 1 and June 30, 2023, 60 labor disputes were registered in
which 1,198,385 workers were involved. In the month of June there was
an increase in sectoral conflict that was more than double that of
the previous month and the highest figure in this period of
government. This is explained by what happened mainly in construction
and education.
The
struggles of the workers have been making their way despite the
hegemony of opportunism in the leadership of the PIT-CNT, in a year
in which a reactionary pension law was approved, the annual Budget
Accountability is under parliamentary discussion, the last of the
period, and the 10th Round of the Salary Councils. To this is added
the struggle for drinking water, given the water crisis and very
important conflicts in
the unions of public companies (MSCE) against privatizations and for
personal income.
The
class struggle currents have been advancing in influence and
coordination in the Coalition of Trade Unions, and their weight has
been decisive in achieving the general strikes and also in the launch
of the Social Security plebiscite underway.
Plebiscite for Social
Security
On August 10, in the Representative Table of the
PIT-CNT, won an important victory by achieving a majority in its
plebiscite proposal. The text proposed by ATSS (BPS workers) had the
support of the class point of view, that of our party and that of the
UP. The campaign to collect the required 300,000 signatures is
already being prepared and then for the 1,200,000 votes needed in
October 2024, together with the national elections. A constitutional
reform is proposed to maintain the retirement age at 60 years, set a
minimum retirement equal to the national minimum wage and eliminate
the AFAP.
The Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR) and the
Popular Unity (UP)
The
center of gravity of the mass work of the PCR, which commemorated its
50th Anniversary in December 2022, is in the labor movement and the
unions, its members are part of the Class Trade Union Current. At
this stage, we are fighting for a democratic, agrarian and
anti-imperialist revolution in uninterrupted march to socialism.
Since
the end of the dictatorship in 1985, we joined the work in the Base
Committees of the Broad Front, within the radical left. In 1989 we
participated in the founding of the MPP (Popular Participation
Movement), with the MLN-Tupamaros and other organizations. We were
there until 2001 when the right-wing line of Mujica and Huidobro took
over the leadership.
From
there we continued in the FA to try to defeat the traditional right
and make an advanced popular experience, which was achieved in 2004.
In 2005, due to the government's agreements with the IMF and other
measures already mentioned, we withdrew from the FA and in 2006,
together with the March 26 Movement and the Left Current, we founded
the Popular Assembly, today Popular Unity.
The
UP, with a consistent anti-imperialist program, won one deputy in the
2014 elections, with 27,000 votes, which we could not maintain in
2019. We persisted for 17 years and prepared for the battles of the
plebiscite and the elections of 2024.
International situation
The
international situation shows a sharpening of the inter-imperialist
contradictions whose center is the imperialist war of aggression of
Russia in Ukraine, with the increasing involvement of Yankee
imperialism and NATO and the growing danger of a third world war. The
use of nuclear weapons is increasingly possible if the situation were
to escalate.
This
situation is taking place in a context of international economic
crisis that was enhanced by the Covid 19 pandemic, and changes in the
relations of forces of the imperialist countries. Yankee imperialism
remains the main power in terms of its economic, political and
military power, but it is in decline and in a multipolar world where
Chinese imperialism is seriously contesting for hegemony and the
BRICS is being enlarged.
The
imperialist powers are once again resorting to war and the arms
industry to get out of the crisis and divert the class struggles
within their countries. There is an alarming and generalized growth
of ultra-right and fascist parties and organizations in the
imperialist countries and also in Latin America.
At
the same time the proletariat and the oppressed peoples of the world
have been developing very important struggles, confronting the
adjustments against the wages and budgets for health care, housing
and education for the people, and reactionary laws such as the reform
of social security and those that limit the right to strike, with
which international finance capital seeks to place the crisis on the
backs of the workers.
The
struggle of the popular women’s movements that have become
protagonists of great mobilizations is developing throughout the
continent. In the case of Uruguay, these have reached
300,000 people on March 8, in Montevideo alone. These struggles have
been making very important advances in the struggle for women's
liberation and social equality.
The
imperialist exploitation of the natural resources of the oppressed
countries is being aggravated, which is taking place in the midst of
a great inter-imperialist contention over these resources and over
the strategic infrastructure control. In Latin America China is
making a great advance, both at the commercial level, where it is
already the main purchaser in general, and in investments and
infrastructure, ports and airports, also advancing in political
influence.
In
our America the great struggles of the working class and peoples in
the face of the crisis opened the way to the electoral defeats of the
parties of the right in government, in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru
and Colombia, where governments oriented by various forms of
“progressivism” were established. In general, they quickly
disappoint their peoples by not taking the necessary measures to
break with dependency and carry out the fundamental reforms essential
to really improve the situation of the workers and people.
In
Bolivia the heroic struggle of the people managed to defeat the
fascist coup that overthrew the MAS government, headed by Evo
Morales, and in Peru the struggle against the institutional coup that
overthrew President Pedro Castillo is persisting.
FORWARD
WITH THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING
CLASS AND
THE PEOPLES OF OUR AMERICA!
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