General strike: Argentina sees first great challenge to Milei’s reforms

President Javier Milei will face on Wednesday a general strike called by Argentina's biggest union grouping, the first great challenge to the economic reform bid he launched upon taking office a month and a half ago.

Workers are expected to down tools in their thousands and take to the streets in protest as part of a mobilisation called by the opposition-aligned Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) umbrella union grouping, which has some seven million members.

The CGT, which rejects the campaign of deregulation and economic reform changes proposed by Milei, which would limit the right to strike and affect the financing of unions. Many of its members feel that the reforms would leave them vulnerable to exploitation, and poorer.

“No union is in a position to give in an inch of what has been achieved,” warned Facundo Moyano, general co-secretary of the CGT, who rejects the budget-slashing changes Milei wants to introduce by government decree and the so-called 'Omnibus Law.'