He PIT-CNT is preparing to begin the most active stage in the signature collection campaign to enable the plebiscite against social security reform in Uruguay. The organization hopes to reach the required 270,000 signatures by April 27 and even reach a total of 500,000 adhesions.
The end of the year is a complex stage, in general, due to the different events, dates and balances that accumulate around the beginning of the holidays and the summer season, making it difficult to organize different issues. The union center did not escape this context, to which were added the different elections in the unions that almost put on pause the meeting of signatures that they carry out throughout the country to submit to popular consultation the constitutional reform in pension matters.
So far, the campaign has confirmed 66,000 signatures, according to official data from the PIT-CNT with cutoff to December. “We still don’t have a count, we think that in the first days of February we will make a public announcement of how many signatures we have so far,” he explained. Carlos Calvijo, member of the workers’ representation team on the board of directors of the Social Security Bank (BPS) to the Public Media portal. The expectation is “a clearly higher figure” than that reported last year.
“Operation return” begins
“The idea is to target ‘operation return’ strongly, since although the signatures are coming out naturally, we are fine-tuning the procedures so that, precisely, those signatures reach the command of the PIT-CNT”, Clavijo explained.
The “operation return” refers to the actions that the union center is taking so that those signatures collected throughout the country through different mechanisms—such as plenary sessions, organizations and groups that go out touring, etc.—are sent and centralized in the PIT-CNT, “to have them tangibly.”
“That is what we have to work on a little more, because we believe that the signatures are there, they are being given easily,” considered the union member, and added that “the important thing is not only that the signatures are there, but that they reach the command for us digitize them and put them in a box and then, when April 26 arrives, deliver the signatures to the Electoral Court “all neat.”
“If all the signatures that are inside, which they tell us are there, came back, perhaps there would be considerably more signatures than 66,000,” said Clavijo. “We believe that the signatures are there and we are going to perfectly reach what we had proposed from the beginning, reaching 500,000 signatures in general, and the 270,000 valid ones that we need to enable the plebiscite,” he added.
100 days of campaign
The truth is that there are fewer and fewer days left to gather the necessary signatures to give rise to the plebiscite that would be held together with the general elections in October. However, since PIT-CNT They are confident that they will reach their goals despite having only 66,000 official signatures so far.
“Something similar happened in the Urgent Consideration Law, where in the last 15 or 20 almost a third of the signatures were collected or, at least, a third of the signatures reached us. That can also happen at this stage,” said Clavijo.
Immediately, on Monday the union headquarters command to finish outlining the strategy during the season, with the idea of, starting on the 15th, starting to go out to collect signatures on the beaches and at massive public events such as the events for the 300 years of Montevideo and the shows Carnival. “Many murgas are going to come out with this issue and that is going to help a lot to inform people,” considered the worker representative in the BPS.
In that sense, Clavijo acknowledged that they have managed to reach all workers in society, in general, but what has been missing are “arms to gather signatures,” in reference to the delay that the PIT-CNT to centralize accessions. With the beginning of 2024, and without factors of dispersion in unions and political and social organizations, the center expects “a much larger deployment” while recovering the “rhythm of militancy”.
Source: Ambito
