The main outsourcing of Aerolineas Argentinas, GPS, part of the conglomerate of companies (the Byzantine cleaning, GPS, Global Handling, etc.) that belongs to Nicolas Hazoff, sells charges and luggage control services and passenger assistance. For 2024 GPS became relatively known for having fired more than 200 aeronautical workers between Aeroparque and Ezeiza, much for trade union and political persecution, such as today that is current currency in companies such as Shell, Secco, Georgalos, accusing an alleged economic crisis that could never demonstrate and that the Ministry of Labor of PBA denied.
Millionaire gains, deplorable working conditions
GPS-AR workers perform their tasks outdoors, exposing themselves daily to health problems and the possibility of suffering work accidents due to the working conditions to which they are subjected. Both Aerolineas Argentinas and Argentine Airports have knowledge of the problem, but make deaf ears to the claims of workers’ improvements.
To begin with: in the Jorge Newbery Metropolitan Airparque they have a rest room in which about 120 workers are overcrowded for each shift (650 in total) in a place with capacity for 50, which has no emergency exit and is infested with rats and cockroaches. If a fire occurs, many lives would be in danger, but inexplicably, the Government and Airports Argentina hold them a qualification. In addition, this Chamber, which is simultaneously costumes of men and women and operational base, does not have chests for workers, who often share it between three or four. At this time the “base” is flooded for lack of maintenance.
Employees also do not have their own bathrooms or toilets: within the ramp sector there is only one bathroom for all the workers of all the companies that operate flights (more than 3000 people per shift). Hygienic conditions are inhuman already often affect health, causing diseases that employers do not consider occupational diseases, such as urinary infection or others.
Countless complaints in the Ministry of Labor, the Superintendence of Risk at Labor (SRT) and formal applications have submitted the GPS delegates. The images speak for themselves and Argentine airports, Aerolineas Argentinas and GPS show their true face of contempt to ramp workers.
GPS-OR operational logistics is equally precarious. The internal mobiles to transfer the staff to the different restricted areas of the airport are only three: a combi type truck with capacity for 13 operators apart from the driver, but usually takes up to 20 per trip (several traveling unemployed). This mobile has operated whole years with expired stirrups and doors that do not close, causing falls, sprains, cuts and trauma of diverse gravity and adding the dangers that this entails on an airport platform of maneuvers. The rest of the fleet is also in disastrous conditions.
In recent weeks, the company was reached that the company together with the Art Asociart SA defined the annual medical and auditory exams in this costume/base/rest room with overcrowding of the workers so as not to affect the time in the operation. There they made blood extraction to X -ray operators and absurdly audiometry to all personnel. When the delegates denounce this in the SRT for illegality and neglect – which was not carried out in an environment conducive to sanitary and hygienic measures for blood extraction, or in the Accussed and Hermetic room for audiometry – they managed to get the art and the company to cancel the studies.
GPS is known for having millionaire debts in contributions of retirement and social works. This problem, denounced by the delegates despite the collusion of their UPADEP union with the company, led to cancellations of operations, low in social works of affiliates, bulky extra charges in the charges. To top it off, it caused two or three months debts in the withholdings for food embargoes that, by judicial orders, must be deposited in a timely manner to families and children. It takes months to comply with the families of colleagues who unfortunately die with the obligation to pay them life insurance and the liquidation and half compensation that corresponds by law. This is the same company that in Pandemia pursued and dismissed first -line workers who demanded alcohol in gel and gloves to face Covid at airports.
GPS has been making multimillionaires contracts with the State and at airports. They did this with all governments from 2013 to date. The novelty is that they also created a Handling Services, called Global, in the midst of the current government offensive of decentralizing the intercargo ramp operations and distributing those businesses to friends. Meanwhile the government of Javier Milei, which promotes a huge attack on the living conditions of the working people, traveled to CĂłrdoba to a private event (the right Fest), using three aircraft of the Argentine Air Force and spending about $ 80,000 in aeronautical logistics. Who is the caste then?
GPS dismissed continue to fight for their reincorporation and next to the workers were a key piece to avoid the privatization of Argentine airlines with campaigns and struggle in the streets, which would have meant an even greater attack on the working conditions, wages and losses of thousands of jobs. GPS delegates and workers continue to insist that to face Milei and his friends, unified assemblies of all aeronautical, effective and outsourced unions are needed by putting “all the meat to the grill”, with broad participation of the bases where they can vote for a struggle plan to stop the government and force it to go back in their plans, coordinating with sectors in fighting such as the Garrahan hospital. Undoubtedly, such a fight would be an example that would give another moral to hundreds of thousands of workers who want to stand up today.
There are silver. While working conditions are increasingly worse and inhuman for state neglect, for the thirst for profits of employers such as hazaff and contempt for workers. GPS is clear about its policy: billions for its pockets, superexploitation conditions for those below.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
