The powerful one promotes the salary recognition of community cooks

On March 8, the Latin American social organization The Mighty presented a project
of the law of salary recognition for all community cooks who support
popular pots, dining rooms and picnic areas of the country. They are women and dissidents who spend up to 8 hours a day cooking for millions of people. The initiative contemplates an income that has as a floor the Minimum, Vital and Mobile Wage, vacations, retirement and social security coverage.“For decades, food spaces have been held in popular neighborhoods that address a concrete reality: the impossibility of covering the food basket has historically led the communities themselves to sustain these responses from love and solidarity,” explains María Claudia ‘La Negra’ Albornoz from the Chalet neighborhood of Santa Fe. Faced with this reality, the social organization La Poderosa presented a bill to recognize the salary of community cooks who support popular pots, dining rooms and picnic areas throughout the country. Both the National State and the provinces and municipalities usually provide food to these spaces. There they are cooked and given to families who, in many cases, cannot even cover a daily meal. This is a major problem in terms of public health and unacceptable social injustice. The point is that it is making invisible the enormous work of cooking those foods.
“We no longer want a symbolic recognition or to be applauded and told ‘how good what you are doing’, we want economic recognition”, says Natalia Zaracho, worker of the popular economy and national deputy, who today were present at the march for 8M. The bill requires the salary recognition of these people, who are 80% women and sexual dissidents, including vacations, retirement contributions and everything related to social security. The initiative contemplates an income equivalent to a Minimum, Vital and Mobile Wage, which would represent a global budget equivalent to less than 0.07% of GDP, 10% of what is allocated to intelligence services or 0.14% of the debt services provided for in the 2023 national budget. The organization, together with others, is carrying out a campaign to collect 500,000 signatures for the presentation of the project in the form of a popular initiative before the National Congress. “In this country we don’t have an Ombudsman. We need 500,000 signatures and an Ombudsman to endorse the Popular Initiative, but we don’t even have that. Today, the first to sign is Nelly Vargas, who has been working for 32 years in the Zavaleta dining room,” announces ‘La Negra’ Albornoz. This 8M and in subsequent days La Poderosa will put tables in different parts of the country to add adhesions.

Original source in Spanish