"Political extortion disguised as a grievance": what the government's statement says against ATE regarding the strike at national hospitals.
It was hoped that some sort of agreement would be reached at the hearing held at the Ministry of Labor, attended by representatives from Garrahan Hospital, unions, and the government, but the opposite happened. In the afternoon, the residents called off the strike , but ATE, the state workers' union, declared the negotiations a failure and announced a strike starting at midnight on Thursday in all public hospitals nationwide . Now the government has warned: "There are no excuses; we will not allow a few to continue causing harm."
"The government has no intention of resolving the Garrahan conflict. We at ATE are going to nationalize the protest and launch a national strike across the entire health sector starting at midnight," said Rodolfo Aguiar, secretary general of the State Workers Association (ATE), on Wednesday afternoon. In response, the government responded in a statement from the Ministry of Health.
"The national hospitals express our absolute condemnation of the actions of the ATE union , which refuses to comply with the mandatory conciliation process ordered by the National Labor Secretariat. This conduct is serious and deliberate. The right to health cannot be held hostage by political and union interests," reads the opening statement from the Ministry of Health, headed by Mario Lugones.
And he continues: "This is not a union measure; it's political extortion disguised as a grievance. There are no excuses. They have no right to fail to fulfill an obligation. Healthcare workers who choose not to attend their duties are violating basic obligations that directly affect vulnerable people and jeopardize the continuity of care."
— Ministry of Health of the Nation (@MinSalud_Ar) June 5, 2025
"National hospitals are not union battlegrounds. They are places of care, dedication, and commitment," they noted in the statement. "And we will not allow a few to continue harming the functioning of the entire system to defend their own interests," they concluded.
Meanwhile, ATE points out that only the government's second-string health officials, who allegedly have no decision-making power, attended the hearing. "Only the workers' representatives and a few Garrahan officials attended the hearing, but no government officials. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Economy, and the Chief of Staff should have attended this hearing," Aguiar criticized in an interview with TN .
"It's not that there was no agreement, but rather that there wasn't even a proposal . The meeting was a fraud," Alejandro Lipovich, general secretary of the ATE Internal Board at Garrahan Hospital, later declared.
Residents at Garrahan Hospital have called off the strike they had called for this Wednesday (and until Friday). Photo: Guillermo Rodríguez Adami.
The meeting was originally scheduled for Thursday, but was brought forward due to the hospital's residents' assembly's refusal to accept the bonus announced by the government late Tuesday, which would increase resident physician salaries from $800,000 to $1,300,000. Because of this refusal, the Ministry of Labor ordered the mandatory conciliation this Wednesday.
"What we're asking for, above all, is a 100% salary increase, which is what was lost, for all permanent staff, residents, interns, and contractors, bringing the minimum wage to 1,800,000 pesos , which is the cost of a basic food basket," Norma Lezana of the Association of Professionals and Technicians (APyT) at Garrahan Hospital told TN on Wednesday.
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