1-Day General Strike Cripples Argentina

Peronist-led trade unions crippled Argentina on Friday with a peaceful general strike protesting government austerity policies.

The 24-hour strike, marking the first anniversary of a campaign against inflation, highlighted a bitter dispute between leaders of the General Confederation of Labor and the government of President Raul Alfonsin. The confederation is the backbone of the late President Juan D. Peron’s political movement, which today forms the main opposition to Alfonsin’s ruling Radical Civic Union in Congress.

Labor says that inflation has been reduced at the cost of a 20% lower living standard for workers. The government says that one of the successes of its Austral Plan, imposed a year ago today, has been its protection of purchasing power.

No Changes Foreseen

The strike was a clear rebuff to Alfonsin, but there seemed little chance that it would trigger any dramatic changes in his economic program, which has drawn international praise.

Industrial workers walked off their jobs across the country Friday. Argentine news services reported strong support for the strike in most provinces. Scattered minor incidents were reported, most of them against owner-drivers of buses defying the strike.

In Buenos Aires, many government offices, banks, financial markets and businesses functioned with reduced staffs. But most shops and restaurants operated normally, downtown and in residential areas.

State-owned railroads, which carry a million passengers a day in this metropolitan area of 10 million people, were idle. Airports were open but delays were common. Subways offered about half the usual service, and only about one-fifth of the city’s privately owned buses were running. Private autos flooded the city, causing mammoth traffic jams.

Labor Claims Success

Aldo Serrano, one of the labor confederation’s leaders, called the strike overwhelmingly successful. Police estimated absenteeism in the capital at 90% in industry, 70% in commerce and 80% among public school teachers.

Friday’s strike was the confederation’s sixth against Alfonsin, who led the return of elected government to Argentina in December, 1983, after nearly eight years of military dictatorship. Alfonsin’s government imposed the Austral Plan to brake inflation, which had reached a level of 1,700% a year.

The plan froze prices and wages, promised to reduce the government deficit, and replaced the peso with a new unit of currency, the austral.

Under the plan, the cost of living has increased 43% in the past year, a minimal figure compared to triple-digit inflation that had become the norm. Real wages have been maintained, the government says, and purchasing power should increase in the course of this year.

‘Absolutely Negative’

At a press conference earlier this week, Alfonsin denounced Friday’s strike as “political, infantile and absolutely negative.” Responding to Alfonsin at a press conference of his own, Saul Ubaldini, the confederation leader, blamed the Austral Plan for “low wages, lack of economic growth, dependence on international usury, escalating unemployment and hunger.”

The government, seeking to transform into growth the economic stability that the Austral Plan has created, now pledges structural reforms that it hopes will include a more efficient public sector, the sale of government-owned enterprises that are losing money, and incentives to increase agricultural and industrial exports.

It is also pursuing support overseas for eased payment terms on $50 billion in debt and development capital under the so-called Baker Plan, a U.S. initiative proposed by Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III to generate growth in debtor nations.

But the labor and political branches of Peronism, traditionally ultranationalistic in outlook, demand a break with Argentina’s creditors and a redistribution of income to favor disadvantaged sectors. The unions threaten another national strike and mass demonstrations by the end of the month.