## Public sector employees denounce that the cuts will put many state functions on hold
Javier Milei believes that the state “is the enemy” and “a criminal organization” which he seeks to reduce to its minimum size. He’s doing this amidst criticism and applause from a deeply polarized society. When he took office as president of Argentina in December 2023, the state had 341,477 people employed. Two months later, Milei’s administration had already eliminated 9,000 jobs. And, this past week, 15,000 more layoffs were ordered. New dismissals are expected in the middle of the year… but nobody knows how many jobs will be slashed, nor who will be fired.
Some 50,000 workers are living in this climate of uncertainty, most of them on temporary contracts. In the past, these non-permanent positions were renewed once a year. At the moment, these individuals know that they’ve survived the first stage, but their positions will still be under review for three or six more months.
Even if the state apparatus is bloated and needs to be improved, simply firing 10% of your workforce isn’t going to magically improve things (especially when done so quickly). You basically can’t know if you fire useful people or bloat. And for each “unnecessary” person you fire you also fire someone who was the only one in their department understanding their job and doing their actual work.
Agreed, but similar to how businesses retrench and let good with bad people go they do make mistakes, but hopefully they are not doing it blindly with a dart board and pictures, but rather through analysis in determining what fat they can cut and what part is muscle. I am right now as we speak in the middle of a company restructuring, where they are retrenching about 13% of employees. Won’t lie it is not nice going through it but also this is my third time going through it and on a personal note it is not fun but in a broad sense I understand why the company has to do it.