Aerolíneas Argentinas
informed its employees that they must carry out their tasks in person
"
in accordance with the provisions of the national administration."
The decision of the state airline chaired by
Fabián Lombardo
was communicated internally (see image) and
comes into effect on April 3.
Lombardo, the new president of Aerolíneas, is carrying out a series of measures that aim to differentiate himself from the previous management of
La Cámpora
, during which
he was the commercial director.
Since taking office in December, Lombardo eliminated some management, opened a
voluntary retirement
plan for ground staff (8,000, out of a total of almost 12,000 employees) and significantly lowered the bar for salary increases, despite which his proposal was vetoed by the Ministry of Economy.
This weekend it was learned, as
Clarín
revealed , that the Government will still insist on selling Airlines to private investors.
In fact, in the folder that the Chief of Staff, Nicolás Posse, distributed among the governors during Friday's meeting at the Casa Rosada, Aerolíneas and Intercargo are two of the five state companies to be privatized.
In fact, the privatization of Airlines appears in DNU 70 that Javier Milei published in his first days in office and whose treatment continues in Congress.
In those days of December there was still talk of a mixed figure that Milei himself had mentioned during the campaign: it consisted of delivering the shares in the form of Public Private Participation (PPP) to the company's workers.
After the displacement of the Minister of Infrastructure, Guillermo Ferraro, to whom Lombardo initially reported, Aerolíneas passed into the orbit of the Posse and also of Minister Luis Caputo, who ordered the abort of a joint negotiation that Lombardo had agreed with some of the aeronautical unions, to condition that they lift the strike on February 28.
The measure of force was finalized and there was a correlation this Friday, with surprise meetings of the
Intercargo staff.
This week, the Government will appoint a new president for this state company, which formally has no connection with Aerolíneas but has been moving in a
coordinated manner
since the renationalization of 2008 .
Intercargo is responsible for the ramp service (transfer of passengers and suitcases from the airport to the plane, among other services) for
practically all airlines that operate in the country with the exception of Aerolíneas.
Any foreign airline that begins to operate in Ezeiza
has to hire the services of Intercargo.
The new head of Intercargo will be
Gregorio Borda
, a former Aerolíneas Labor Relations Manager who also
comes from the previous management
(he was appointed in November 2020) and had previously worked at
Avianca Argentina
and
ANAC.
The internal communication of Airlines informs that all employees must work in full presence.
Furthermore, in the midst of a series of movements that seek to show austerity or at least a reduction in public spending, this week the Government
will enable a new public body
, which had been suppressed during Cristina Kirchner's government: the undersecretary of Air Transport (former -Aerocommercial Transport), by
Hernán Adrián Gómez.
He is an expert in commercial aviation law, who was in charge of
the extensive suppression or modification of some 200 articles of commercial aviation laws
to establish an
"open skies" policy.
The last official who had held that position was
Ricardo Cirielli
, who then and today remains the general secretary of the Association of Aeronautical Technical Personnel
(APTA
).
Cirielli had been one of the
few union members
who supported the incipient presidential candidacy of Néstor Kirchner, who in 2003 appointed him undersecretary of Aerocommercial Transportation.
But the bond was eroded after Cirielli's complaints against his then superior, Ricardo Jaime, and in January 2008 he was
fired
from Cristina Kirchner's government through the process of
closing the organization.