Before the strike that the pilots and crew of Aerolíneas Argentinas started this Friday, Luciano Corradi –delegate of GPS, the largest outsourced company of Aerolíneas- spoke with Canal E of Perfil. From within he tells the reality that is being lived and hidden by the large media outlets that are close to the national government. With a great campaign, the workers of the national airline managed to get the Congress to remove Aerolíneas from the list of privatizable state companies of the Ley Bases. Luciano tells the details of what is the current privatization plan of the government. “Emptying, defunding, handing over air routes, low wages with frozen collective bargaining since November of last year, voluntary retirements and 150 dismissals among outsourced workers, including the creation of blacklists. With this, Milei seeks to bankrupt and cheapen the company so that there is no other option but to sell it.”.
Regarding the situation at GPS, the main outsourced company of Aerolíneas Argentinas, where Luciano Corradi is a delegate, he said: “We are reporting that the GPS company made a list of future layoffs that it maliciously began to spread through different WhatsApp groups and through different publications it began to publish the list of those who had been laid off with the sole purpose of terrorizing the workers.”.
Regarding the role of the union, he added: “The aggravating factor of this persecution is that our union, Upadep, is part of spreading these blacklists of the company, instead of organizing our colleagues. From the internal commission we will go to the Secretary of Labor to denounce this persecution, while we have already managed to reinstate one of our activist colleagues through judicial means.”.
This Friday, the pilots and crew members enrolled respectively in APLA and AAA carried out a strike from 5 to 14 hours, as their ground colleagues from the Intercargo company enrolled in APA did last week. Luciano explained this “The full-time workers of the pilots’ union, the flight attendants’ union, the ground workers’ union, and the air traffic controllers’ unions have been behind in wages by 70 to 80%. Their last collective bargaining agreement was in November of last year. With salaries flattened, voluntary retirements are not so voluntary, they are blackmail to get rid of the full-time staff. They are covert dismissals.”.
In addition to this attack on workers, the government is handing over air routes that belonged to Aerolíneas Argentinas, defunding the company, emptying the maintenance sectors, all of this forms a combination of dismantling, in light of this Luciano said: “Since the beginning of this government, we have denounced that we workers had to prepare ourselves for this privatization attempt. First they tried with the Omnibus Law, then with the Law of Bases, where we developed a huge campaign with the slogan AIRLINES ARE NOT FOR SALE and we managed, together with our effective colleagues and the unions, to remove the flag carrier from the privatizable companies. Today it is not with a law, but with the same objective, but from the board of directors of the company itself, directed by the National Government.”.
Luciano added “The victory of the troops in their demand for a salary increase is a first step. The same is true of the fight against layoffs at GPS. In particular, it is necessary to reject and strongly denounce the use of blacklists, for which we are asking the aeronautical unions, as well as all unions at the national level, the deputies, the senators, the legislators, all the sectors in struggle and above all the Human Rights organizations to repudiate this situation and show solidarity with us.”.
The defense of the flagship airline today involves defending each of its workers’ claims, as well as denouncing the lack of funding and the emptying of funds. They are all different conflicts, but it is necessary to achieve the greatest unity because the government’s plan is one and the same, against the workers and Aerolíneas Argentinas.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
