Although the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean estimates the average annual growth rate of the countries in the region at 1% between 2015 and 2024 and forecasts growth of over 2% in 2025 and a downward trend in inflation, workers remain highly exploited, with a sharp decline in real wages (as well as pensions), with 46.7% of the workforce employed in informal jobs. Governments are faced with the need to reduce the tax burden and are considering cutting payrolls and privatizing centralized state enterprises and services.

Every bourgeois government, along with the parties, parliamentarians and trade union clowns, tries to delude the working class that the recovery of business and enterprises will bring them prosperity. But the prosperity of national economies will not necessarily translate into improved wages, working conditions and the working environment. Any economic plan of the bourgeois governments of the region will be based on increasing the rate of exploitation of the working class.

Governments will implement incentives for growth, capital accumulation and attraction of foreign investment, accompanied by unemployment and a sustained decline in real wages. More and more, traitorous union leaderships and opportunist parties will find it difficult to contain workers’ struggles and channel discontent into the electoral circus. Conditions that will require the strengthening and extension of the terror and repression of the bourgeois state.

The struggles are distorted by the influence o f the petty bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy. The regime unions and opportunist parties that influence the labor movement and control its economic organizations play a fundamental role in the demobilization, disorganization and division of the union movement. The workers’ demands are mixed with those of the bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie: national sovereignty, against the privatization of state enterprises, for credit to small and medium-sized enterprises, etc.

However, some workers have taken up the struggle either by breaking the control of union leaderships or by forcing them to take the lead in strikes and mobilizations. Workers have demanded wage increases, payment of arrears, and defense of their living conditions and working environment.

These struggles have been defeated or have achieved poor results. But they represent an anticipation of the resumption of the class struggle. From these episodes a new trade union leadership of the class has not emerged, nor have there been contacts between these movements and the revolutionary party. We must evaluate this reality of the workers’ movement neither with idealism nor with voluntarism, but as confirmation of how the capital-labor contradiction emerges and imposes itself despite the control of opportunism and betrayal in the trade union movement.

We have seen the unity of the workers at the base, the decision to strike indefinitely and without minimum services, with assemblies and organizations at the base, the demands for wage increases and related to the social and economic situation of the workers, rejecting the treacherous positions of the union leaders.

The political inadequacies of these movements cannot be overcome without a contact of the union movement with the direction of the communists. Hence the importance of persevering in revolutionary propaganda.

The following are to be highlighted at the beginning of this 2025:

Since November 22, meat industry workers in Uruguay have been fighting with several actions to break the stalemate in collective bargaining over wages and working conditions. This movement has crossed borders, receiving the support of the National Confederation of Food Workers of Brazil and other trade unions in the region. The meat industry, one of the most important economic sectors in Uruguay, employs thousands of workers and has a significant impact on the country’s exports. However, working and wage conditions in the sector have been the subject of recurring tensions. Workers are demanding wage improvements in line with the rising cost of living and the implementation of measures to guarantee decent working conditions and safety in production processes. Many of the sector’s employees receive wages that barely exceed the legal minimum, despite having to work long hours and conditions that pose health risks. It remains to be seen to what extent international solidarity will materialize, starting with that of Brazilian workers in the same industry.

In Argentina, the parliamentary representation of the so-called “Frente de Izquierda”, an electoral coalition between various opportunist parties, has presented a bill for the nationalization of the railway system “under the control, management and administration of workers’ and users’ organizations”. Yet another nefarious influence of opportunism that seeks to distract workers’ struggles from the demands and confrontation with the bosses. The path of “struggle” presented by the Left Front (and all the opportunists in the region) is that of betrayal, of polyclassism, of parliamentarism, of electoralism, to keep the workers’ movement impotent in the face of the offensive of the capitalists and their governments.

In 2024 there were 35,000 layoffs in the public sector and the devaluation of the currency continued. The Milei government no longer consults the official unions, but they continue to support the bourgeoisie in the exploitation of workers and any critical reaction is only a pantomime that excludes the workers’ struggle.

In October 2024, the purchasing power of the minimum wage was almost 40% lower than in November 2019 and 54% lower than in the same month in 2015. This is a decline in wages that precedes Milei’s management since the bourgeoisie still does its business by increasing the exploitation of the working class.

In El Salvador, since March 2022, 33 extensions of the “emergency regime” have been approved, justified for the fight against criminal gangs, but also useful for terrorizing the working class, with union leaders persecuted, imprisoned and killed. Under the pretext of the emergency regime, the government has cancelled collective agreements and prohibited strikes.

In agreement with the International Monetary Fund, 19 public bodies have been eliminated, spending has been cut, layoffs have been made and paychecks have been cut in the public sector, especially in health care and education. New taxes and cuts in subsidies for the population have been added.

In the countries of the region, the 48-hour working week prevails.

In Venezuela, since the 2012 labor law was enacted, the week has been set at 40 hours, with 2 consecutive days of rest. With exceptions for some sectors, in addition to allowing extensions of the day for "justified" reasons.

In Mexico, there is a “40-Hour Front.” There, the week is 48 hours. The proposal to reduce it to 40 hours is part of the “100 government commitments” included in the electoral campaign of the current president.

The maximum legal work week in Colombia has been set at 46 hours from July 15, 2024; on July 16, 2025, it will be reduced to 44 hours and from July 16, 2026, to 42, over six days a week. However, there are known cases in which Colombian employers take advantage of this to reduce wages. Chile is expected to reach 40 hours per week starting April 26, 2028.

In Brazil, a petition to the National Congress in September calling for an end to the 6x1 working schedule, six days of work for one day of rest, received nearly 3 million signatures. The 6x1 shift is widespread in commerce and services. Of the approximately 55 million workers, about two-thirds work a 40-hour week. Eighty-two percent of workers in commerce and services earn less than 2,824 reais, $455, and 42 percent earn less than 2,100 reais.

But the National Congress has already buried or rejected at least 9 proposals on reducing working hours in Brazil. Most of the changes to the legislation on working hours have favored the bosses. In 2017, a reform established that overtime be compensated with an equal number of hours of rest within six months, which companies often do not respect. Under the previous rules, workers received a 50% supplement for overtime, which rose to 100% on weekends.

The Lula government did not express itself against the 6x1 in order not to alienate the workers. The claim is not supported by the mobilization of the unions but by public opinion and electoral interests.

The proposal to reduce the work week in Central and South American countries is part of the bourgeoisie’s calculations, which solves the need for extended working hours through overtime. In fact, the reduction of working hours is accompanied by its greater flexibility. Furthermore, the majority of the working class is now precarious or underemployed and for them no rules are applied. In Brazil, for example, Uber drivers and food and package deliverers are not classified as employees but as "micro-entrepreneurs", without rights or Social Security.

The class-based trade union movement will have to take up the demand for a significant reduction in working hours, without reducing wages and without increasing overtime and work intensity. For example, in education by reducing the number of students per class, or in healthcare by reducing the number of patients per nurse.

For the year 2025, the minimum wage in Colombia has been set at 1,423,500 pesos. This covers only 52% of the basic needs of a single worker and 35.6% of what a family of four requires. But the minimum wage only applies to 9.9% of the economically active population: 10 million workers do not even receive that.

In Venezuela, on January 10, Nicolás Maduro was sworn in as president for a new term (2025-2031), with a strong media and military-police deployment and with the arrest of both right-wing and opportunist left-wing parties. Announcements of arrests of “terrorists” and CIA agents abound. All the political and media tension that surrounded the election results of July 28, 2024 and the re-election of Nicolás Maduro reflects an inter-bourgeois struggle, which in turn is an expression of inter-imperialist struggles for control of Venezuela’s raw materials, oil and gas. Both the political factions in government and those that oppose it represent bourgeois and imperialist interests in the division of the cake.

Paradoxically, while the Biden administration was offering an increase in the reward to $25 million each for information leading to the capture of Maduro and Cabello (the same bounty that was hanging over Osama Bin Laden) and was issuing visa restrictions for around 2,000 Chavistas, at the same time the White House was reaching an agreement with the Venezuelan government on the oil and gas business and was not revoking the licenses of American oil companies operating in Venezuela.

Both political factions in Venezuela protect the profits of the bourgeoisie and imperialism. Both will use the police-military-judicial apparatus to repress and crush workers’ struggles. Both seek to align workers on their side, in a polarization between bourgeois groups.

But the opportunist left tries to present itself as an alternative to these two political poles, demanding legality, democracy and human rights. This left, parliamentary and electoral, nationalist, patriotic and democratic, is also the enemy of the workers and contributes to their enslavement. It only calls for some reform that does not change the essence of the dominant regime of exploitation. The resumption of the class struggle will have to break not only with the artificial polarization imposed by the bourgeoisie, but also with the treacherous currents of the opportunist left.

The path that workers must follow is to return to strike, for an indefinite period and without notice, to demand significant increases in wages, pensions and incomes, support for the unemployed, a reduction in the working day, relying on the organization at the base, moving forward towards the rebirth of true class-based unions, grouped in a United Class-Based Trade Union Front for the clash against the bosses, their governments and their repression.