Workers in the fruit sector in Argentina largely turned their backs on a general strike called for Tuesday this week in protest at the Kirchner government's response to high inflation.
As port, public transport and bank workers went all out, fresh-fruit union leader Lucio Quilpatay told the Argentinean press this week: “In Mendoza there are more than 100 union organisations and only five of them are on strike. It is as though Mendoza were not on strike.”
Quilpatay was one of 30 union leaders to sign a statement this week saying that his organisation would not be taking part in the strike because it deemed it to be “illegitimate, illegal and inappropriate” saying they preferred to use collective bargaining as a means to achieving their ends rather than blockades and pickets.
