20 roadblocks and shortages

Gabriela Romano (36), nurse at Plottier hospital, has been sleeping for 18 days next to road 17, in the Portezuelo district, a few minutes from Añelo, the capital of Vaca Muerta.

He wears a sweatshirt, jogging pants and a chin strap that covers his face. His eyes sparkle. She is tired but optimistic. Those who stay with her, for the same number of days, are convinced that she they will bend the arm of the government of Neuquén and they will get the raise they are asking for on their wages.

In Neuquén, hundreds of members of the Neuquén health worker movement have transformed the route into your permanent home.

They sleep in tents, in the uncomfortable seats of their vehicles, sitting on beach chairs, perched on concrete and barely covered in plastic. Across the province there are approximately 20 stakes and in each of them, between 30 and 50 meet.

Thousands more are spending 12 hours minimum in the picket lines, then they go to hospitals to work 12 to 4 hour shifts.

The conflict has put the south of the country in check. The roads that connect Neuquén to Bariloche, San Martín de Los Andes and Villa La Angostura remain desolate.

In the main towns of Río Negro and Neuquén, fuel is scarce and filling up a tank for travel has become an urban adventure.

In Vaca Muerta, the stakes hold completely sealed the tank. Industry spokespersons say the conflict could affect gas supplies in winter.

On Friday, the general secretary of the oil companies of Neuquén, Río Negro and La Pampa warned that his union would take 30,000 workers to the streets if the roads were not open.

From the road to the hospital

The lives of the employees of the vast majority of health workers, more than 7,000 people, have turned into a constant back and forth. From guard to the road, and from the road back to the hospital.

“It’s devastating, we have become road athletes, in the log holders. We have stamina because we are used to doing 16 hour shifts. Our body and our mind know the effort, ”he says. Bugle Romano.

“The health workers can sleep upright, on a chair, so that we can support the road and whatever it takes,” explains Gabriela Suppicich (55), a social work graduate from the mental health section of the same center.

“It has gone from a wage claim to a political conflict. We were despised by ATE and by the government. It could be a lot easier to fix, but they didn’t want to. After a year of pandemic, a year of continuous work, they offer us 14%, ”he says.

Omar Gutiérrez’s government has been in talks with ATE since Friday afternoon. Secretary-General Carlos Quintriqueo said they had asked for a 45% increase in the base rate from the 14% they had already accepted in March.

This 14% is precisely the one that caused the conflict to explode among health workers who do not respond to ATE. From the health movement, they have already warned that ATE does not represent them and that the pickets will not rise beyond the agreement of the union led by Carlos Quintriqueo.

The climatic conditions that workers face are harsh and changeable. It’s been three days hail and heavy rains fell throughout Neuquén. In the last hours the sky has cleared, although the power of the sun is confidently felt. Like a persistent finger pricking their heads.

The dry heat of the day is followed by the freezing cold of the night. When the temperature drops to zero degrees in the Vaca Muerta desert, even animals don’t want to be in the open.

The stakes have become base camps for an excursion that goes much further. There are chairs, tents, makeshift tables and fireplaces that never go out. On them mate, cookies, packets of noodles.

The workers take turns cooking. A little hot water for the companion. Others move the contents of a jar with a spoon. Some have brought their children the little ones who play with the branches and run.

The camps are in place in the middle of nowhere. Here, there is only dwarf vegetation, space, desert.

A solution that does not happen

The vehicles slowly arrive at the blockages. They wait for one of the workers to come and explain their situation. Those with children and grandparents pass. Others they have to wait one, two or three hours or retrace your steps.

“There is exhaustion but it gives us the strength to understand that we have just left everything in the hospital, with long periods of work, to be treated like little robots, to be forgotten by the guild which supposedly represents us. We’re not going to go back over it all, ”says Lihue González (29), administrator of Heller Hospital. González slept 18 days after leaving Añelo.

“We are not alone in this fight. People accompany us and it is one of the most particular conflicts precisely because it is the community itself which knows that an injustice is committed with the sector ”, testifies Alejandra Ferreira (39), psychologist at the Cutral Co.

Ferreira takes turns on the route for 12 consecutive hours, then goes to the hospital where he can spend the same time looking after himself. Very close to where she puts and removes a wood that interrupts traffic, in 1996 and 1997 the Cutral Co stakes. During these years, more than 5,000 YPF workers have taken the paths to demand the privatization of the company and massive layoffs.

“We are not going to leave here, we will continue to demand what we deserve,” warns Josefina Garrido (43), administrator of the same hospital.

Besides the health workers, there are also teachers, friends and collaborators as unusual as Marcos Fredery Darsi (64), who in a stake in Plaza Huincul carries a wooden tablet where he has the “components of Covid 19 ”reported. “The virus was made in the United States and the Chinese stole it,” he says.

In Pincun Leufú, two dogs take a nap that seems eternal on the road. Employees of the local health center chat under the piercing sun.

“The government ignored us from the start. They don’t see us as a guild. And the ATE guild who said we were like an elephant, that I don’t know where the trunk or the tail was. But we are the ones who serve the whole community. Also to them and their children. See what happened we hit the road and we don’t give up», Explains Maria Figueroa (46 years old) nurse.

Beside her, Romina Mena (41 years old), pharmacy assistant, and Karina Santos (33 years old), maid of the Picún Leufú health center, nod in silence.

A few hours later, in Neuquén, night falls and the cold advances. The fire grows as it is fed and the workers huddle together. They talk, they smoke, they talk about what calls them. Meanwhile, orange tongues are the only possible light in the vastness.

Neuquén. Special delivery.