A hundred contracts expired overnight and the notice arrived via system. When the workers went to ask for explanations at the headquarters, the Government sent the Gendarmerie. What remains of Argentine nuclear development after this coup is the question that hangs over Núñez.
The first of July began, for a hundred workers of the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), with the news that they no longer had a job. The confirmation came on Tuesday morning, through the Electronic Document Management system, without prior notice to the area managers themselves. What followed was a day of protests, occupation of the headquarters and, finally, the entry of the National Gendarmerie to deactivate the claim.
The number of fired people is around one hundred, according to much of the coverage of the case, although there is no official number independently confirmed. The Association of Professionals of CNEA and Nuclear Activity (APCNEAN) maintains that the cut reaches 20% of the personnel hired under this modality. The Government, for its part, came out to clarify the magnitude: it maintained that these were not layoffs but rather the non-renewal of 61 fixed-term contracts signed in 2023, during the previous management of the organization, and specified that 42 of those 61 correspond to personnel with a primary or secondary educational level, with no casualties among nuclear engineers or specialized technical personnel. The unions reject this version and insist that the real figure is higher and that it does affect critical areas.
«People found out that they were losing their jobs a day in advance,» denounced Martín Iofrida, general secretary of APCNEAN. Those affected are, according to the unions, professionals, technicians, researchers and administrative personnel who support areas considered strategic: from the CAREM reactor project to the heavy water plant and the extension of the useful life of the Atucha I plant. The protest was not limited to the Buenos Aires headquarters of Núñez: there were also concentrations at the Bariloche Atomic Center and the Ezeiza Atomic Center.
What distinguishes this episode from other adjustments already known in the libertarian administration is the scene it left: Gendarmerie troops entering a public building to disperse state employees who were demanding explanations, while the head of the organization, Martín Porro, remained protected in his office. Is this the way in which the Government decided to manage labor conflicts within the State from now on? The sequence—dismissal without notice, spontaneous complaint, repression—begins to repeat itself with a regularity that can no longer be read as an exception.
From ATE, the general secretary Rodolfo Aguiar described the measure as a «disgrace» and denounced a «brutal repression» against the workers who occupied the headquarters. The union’s reading is not limited to the demand for wages or job stability: it also points to what they consider an attempt to dismantle that paves the way for an eventual privatization of the organization. If the discussion were only budgetary, one might wonder why the adjustment falls, once again, on an area that the Government itself recognizes as strategic in terms of nuclear energy, medicine and critical minerals such as uranium.
National representative Adriana Serquis, former president of the CNEA, expressed her rejection of the decision and recalled that less than a month ago the Secretariat of Nuclear Affairs had presented the guidelines of the 2026 nuclear policy, whose objectives included high added value exports and the preservation of national technological capacity. The contradiction between that document and this week’s layoffs did not go unnoticed among those who closely follow the sector.
The unions have already called for a new mobilization for this Wednesday at the headquarters, under the slogan «At CNEA there is no one left over.» The Government, for its part, showed no signs of backing down. Between the official narrative of a simple non-renewal of contracts and the warnings about the loss of nuclear capabilities that took decades to build, the discussion about what kind of country is left on the other side of the adjustment is just beginning.
