Argentina’s government officially declared aviation to be an “essential service” on Monday, ordering airlines to maintain at least 50 percent of flights in the event of work stoppages.
The decision, which had been trailed last Friday by members of President Javeir Milei’s government, comes after two 24-hour strikes by aviation-worker unions in recent weeks.
The move looked set to intensify a showdown between the budget-slashing president and unions representing staff at the flagship carrier Aerolíneas Argentinas, which slammed the move as an "illegal" impingement on the right to strike.
Unions warned Monday that they would go to court to reverse the decision and anticipated that the conflict “will only get worse.”
Under new rules set forth in two decrees published in the Official Gazette on Monday, unions must give five days notice of a strike.
A commission will then have 24 hours to decide which flights will be maintained during the strike, "which must not be less than 50 percent of those affected," Federico Sturzenegger, Milei’s minister for deregulation and state transformation, wrote on the social platform X.
If the commission fails to reach agreement, the Labour Ministry will determine which flights must be maintained, he added.
The head of the APLA airline pilots' association, Pablo Biró, rejected the decree as "illegitimate and illegal," arguing that the right to strike could only be curtailed in the event of a threat to human life or health.
He said they would take the battle to the courts.
“It is an unlawful and illegal measure, we will resort to local courts, the ILO [International Labour Organisation], the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)... the right to strike is fundamental, it may only be regulated when superior things are at stake, such as life or health,” said Biró in a radio interview.
The unionist warned that “the conflict will only get worse.”
“They say we conduct wild and covert strikes, but that doesn’t exist. A strike is a fundamental right, the only lawful means to defend our interests, claiming wage increases,” he argued.
On Friday, pilots and crew at Aerolíneas Argentinas, which is majority owned by the state, walked off the job for the second time in a month to press for better pay to offset three-digit inflation.
The 24-hour strike led to the cancellation of more than 300 flights, affecting more than 30,000 passengers.
Aviation workers are demanding salary increases of 30 to 35 percent to help them weather Argentina's stubbornly high inflation rate. Consumer prices have increased 236.7 percent over the last 12 months and last month, rose 4.2 percent.
The airline is offering them a 14-percent wage hike.
Since taking office in December, Milei has applied a drastic austerity programme in a bid to rein in chronic inflation and decades of government overspending.
But inflation remains high and the economic slowdown sparked by budget cuts has worsened poverty levels.
The secretary-general of the AAA association of flight attendants, Juan Pablo Brey, said last week the purchasing power of aviation staff had fallen 40 percent since Milei took office in December.
Milei tried to privatise Aerolíneas Argentinas as part of his sweeping economic reforms, but was forced to remove the company from the list of those to be sold off to get his measures through Congress earlier this year.
Congress has the power to strike down the decree on minimum service in the aviation sector. Last week lawmakers rejected a decree increasing funding for the intelligence services.
What the decree says
Milei’s new rules were introduced by two decrees.
It establishes that “in accordance with the decisions of the Committee on Freedom of Association of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), it is lawful to require minimum service in any services which are deemed essential to the country and/or during strikes in sectors of the utmost importance which given their duration or scale could cause irreversible damage, endanger public health or security, or bring serious consequences to the country.”
Walkouts can lead to “the disruption of the essential public service of civil and commercial aviation” that can deliver “serious consequences” to the country, it argues, including the threat to “public health or [the] security of the population.”
It further holds that “in order to prevent any damage to users suffering the consequences of collective conflicts, as well as the economic activities using commercial aviation for the proper running, it is necessary to implement a regime of minimum services which help ensure a balance to enjoy the freedoms involved.”
The statute obliges parties, within 24 hours of notifying a strike “to agree on the minimum services to be maintained during the conflict and the methods for their execution, specifying the way the services are to be performed, including appointing the staff involved.”
“If upon expiration of said term the agreement were not possible or the informed minimum services were insufficient, the determination of the requirements listed above shall be made effective within 48 hours by the Competent Authority, which shall notify and order the parties to comply with it,” it continues.
“In such an event the percentage to determine the minimum services must in no event be lower than 50 percent of the normal and regular activity or services, with a gradual scale on the basis of the duration and cumulative scale of the strike period and collective labour conflict, thus ensuring the connectivity in routes which only have a single service,” reads the decree.
It warns that “failure of any agreement between the parties or should the informed minimum services prove insufficient, the Competent Authority may request the non-binding advice of the Commission of Guarantees set forth under Article 24 of Law No. 25,877, in order to determine the method and characteristics of the execution of the minimum necessary services.”
– TIMES/AFP/NA
Comments