Argentina’s university lecturers’ federation CONADU voted on Friday, September 25, to stop work for 48 or 72 hours beginning September 30, escalating its dispute with Javier Milei’s government over university funding and salaries. The federation said the stoppage could be called off if the government delivered a 33.4% pay adjustment by September 29. The duration and whether it would go ahead therefore remained conditional, not a completed strike.
CONADU’s secretaries approved the action by a majority at a federation meeting and aimed to coordinate with the separate CONADU Histórica federation, according to regional outlet ADNSUR. Canal 26 reported the same demand and said the government’s most recent wage offer was 3%, which the lecturers rejected. Those numbers describe different positions in a negotiation, not an agreed settlement.
Pay, the law and a court order
The lecturers’ demand was tied to the university-financing law and to a judicial order over its implementation. ADNSUR reported that CONADU would suspend the action only if the government met the 33.4% adjustment cited by the union and complied with an order associated with federal judge Martín Cormick. Canal 26 reported that the executive intended to appeal a subsequent five-day judicial deadline for compliance; the government’s position, as described by the outlet, was that it had already complied with the original injunction. The sides thus disagreed not merely on the size of a raise but on whether legally required steps had been carried out.
Canal 26 identified the relevant provisions as Articles 5 and 6 of Law 27,795, dealing with wage adjustments for teaching and non-teaching staff and updates to student scholarship programmes. The outlet said the original interim order dated from December 2025 and was already final. The reported government appeal concerned a later enforcement decision, a narrower issue than overturning the original injunction. Whether the appeal would succeed was unknown at the time of the strike announcement.
A university strike has consequences well beyond the pay packets of teaching staff. Cancelled classes affect students; financing decisions also shape scholarship provision and universities’ capacity to plan their academic year. Equally, the administration’s reluctance to accept the union’s pay demand reflected its insistence on controlling public expenditure. Neither side had secured the other’s consent on September 25.
A protest timed to the budget debate
The federation was preparing for a fifth federal university march on October 15, ADNSUR reported. Its member unions had consulted locally between September 14 and 24 before approving the new stoppage. CONADU also planned public-awareness activities and meetings with deputies and senators from different provinces about higher-education funding in the proposed 2027 budget. That parliamentary route put the pay dispute directly into the government’s upcoming spending negotiations.
CONADU general secretary Clara Chevalier framed the action as a defence of collective organising against what she characterised as the administration’s emphasis on fragmentation and individualism, according to ADNSUR. That was the federation’s political critique, not a neutral description of government policy. Canal 26, meanwhile, reported the administration’s contrary account of its legal compliance, underscoring how much remained contested even before the court considered the planned appeal.
The next concrete deadlines were September 29 for the federation’s condition and September 30 for the proposed start of industrial action. An early-October congressional budget discussion and the planned October 15 march offered further pressure points. As of the September 25 vote, the stoppage had been announced, not yet held, and the federation had not definitively settled whether it would run for two days or three.
