The Government began to rush a new adjustment on the public sector. This is the “second phase” of the State reform promoted by Javier Milei and which is resisted by the unions after the reduction of 7,000 contracts in December and the decision in January to cut overtime of public employees of the central administration.
The officials lowered the order last Wednesday during a meeting of secretaries and undersecretaries of administrative coordination convened in the North Room of the Casa Rosada. They were told that they should reduce some 2,400 directorates, coordinations and units, which would allow senior management positions to be reduced by nearly half.
“They are working on the positions that exist in ministries, secretaries and directorates, that whole package began to be narrowed when we went from 18 to 9 ministriesit continued to narrow when we appointed secretaries and undersecretaries for only 9 portfolios and now it is narrowing even further downwards,” explained a source familiar with the plans.
The driver is the Secretary of State Transformation, Armando Guibert, in charge of the Public Employment area of the Chief of Staff. The official, one of the architects of the State reform of the 1990s, sent a note last week to all the ministers to begin the “second stage” to restructure the administration.
“For these purposes, each Jurisdiction must present until February 9, 2024 the optimization proposal of its organizational structure, which must be guided by criteria of optimization, reduction and improvement of the effectiveness and efficiency of public organizations, in accordance with parameters of differentiation, integration and hierarchical, functional and budgetary interdependence, avoiding the overlap of tasks and facilitating internal coordination and implementation of government objectives,” the three-page memo states.
The idea, according to the note, is that the structures adjust to a series of guidelines that contemplate the “suppression and/or merger” of units that “do not add value” in the production of goods, services and regulations, the reduction of support areas so that they do not exceed a limit of 30%, and the centralization of administrative tasks, among other premises.
The changes would have a greater impact on the Ministry of Infrastructure and Human Capital, which in one case absorbed the portfolios of Public Works, Housing and Transportation, and in the other it came to control Health, Education, Culture and Work. The plan is to reduce the administrative areas of these secretariats to just one per ministry.
The note sent to the entire cabinet generated commotion in the state unions in the midst of protests at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet) to denounce layoffs and the CGT’s call for a strike next Wednesday in rejection of the DNU that promotes the largest labor reform in recent decades, now in the hands of the Supreme Court.
In a statement, the Internal Board of ATE of the Ministry of Labor, indicated on Wednesday that “the national government proposes a brutal dismantling of the State, within which the 2023 layoffs were only a first step” and that the reduction “represents “has eliminated numerous public policies and jobs that are essential for their promotion.”
The hardest phase would come due to the changes established at the end of December with Decree 84, which canceled 7,000 temporary personnel contracts incorporated in 2023 that expired at the end of last year. The rule also established that contracts prior to January 1, 2023 cannot be renewed for more than 90 calendar days.so a new round of layoffs could begin in March.
The reduction of operating expenses (salaries and equipment) is one of the items that the Government seeks to reduce to achieve a primary surplus of 2% of GDP in 2024. The others are transport and energy subsidies, social plans, transfers to provinces and retirements, along with a tax increase.
All these measures, as well as the privatization of 41 companies and the creation of a fund to compensate public employees who will be fired, are part of the omnibus bill that is rejected by the opposition in Congress and are the changes that are most anticipated. generated in the International Monetary Fund.