President Javier Milei vetoed a bill that would have increased salaries at public universities in Argentina to compensate for very high inflation, a day after a massive demonstration against his austerity campaign.
An estimated 270,000 university staff, students and union activists took to the streets on Wednesday to protest Milei’s veto, which he said would come after the spending bill passed the House in August and the Senate last month. The veto was made official in the national newspaper on Thursday morning.
Organized by unions, it was the second mass demonstration against the threats that aggressive libertarian spending cuts pose to higher education. Argentina’s public university system is a source of almost universal pride in this crisis-prone nation.
The first protest, which took place in April, became one of the largest during Milei’s nearly ten months in office. with around 430,000 attendees from all age groups and political parties, according to estimates by La Nación. This time, the unions called for about two-thirds of that number of participants, the newspaper reported.
After the first march, the government compensated universities for operating costs, but did not take into account salaries, which make up the majority of spending. Since then, he offered a 6.8% salary increase that was rejected by the universities, according to a statement from the Ministry of Human Capital.
According to Nicolás Lavagnino, director of the EPC Group of the Ciicti research center, based at the University of San Martín and the University of La Plata, University salaries have lost around 24% in real terms since November 2023.
As a proportion of the gross domestic product, Higher education spending has sunk to its lowest level since 2005, according to Empiria, a consultancy based in Buenos Aires.
Milei took office on December 10 and immediately devalued the currency by almost 55%, resulting in monthly inflation of more than 25% that has since fallen to around 4%. While wages have risen slowly in real terms, they have not yet offset the initial increase.
The bill would have increased college salaries to offset 2024 inflation and then adjust for future inflation, the equivalent of approximately 0.14% of GDP, according to a congressional budget analysis. Lawmakers will now have a chance to reconsider the proposal after Milei’s veto.
The debate over university financing mirrors that which took place earlier this year on pensions and social security.
Both chambers of Congress passed bills that would offset inflation, and Milei immediately threatened to veto the measures because they would upset the budget balance. The president’s pension veto was upheld when lawmakers failed to muster a two-thirds majority to overturn it, a victory his administration hopes to repeat this time.
“This has the same elements as the debate on social security,” said Luis Picat, a national deputy from the province of Córdoba who voted against the budget expansion. “Congress cannot meddle in the budget without saying where it will get the resources to spend more.”
