Aerolíneas

[Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky <gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Comrades and friends,

First, a long comment by yours truly on the destruction of the Argentinean 
national airline.

Second, some news from the union side on the shameless behavior of
Patricia Bullrich, Minister of "Labor" of Argentina and former
Montonero leader. This part, in Spanish.

1. The Argentinean airline, Aerolíneas Argentinas, was a leading case
in the wave of privatizations that gave the final blow to Argentina,
under the auspices of the IMF and Wall Street, after these
institutions transformed my country into a financial colony under the
1976 regime.

In spite of the rot that the 1976 government installed in the highest
posts of the company, and in spite of a financial debt that was
imposed on the firm without ever seeing a single cent (this was part
of the process which led to the illegal Argentinean debt), Aerolíneas
was still in 1983, when the military were replaced by civilians, a
leading line in the world, with the highest standards of safety and
the best onboard attention. And it was still having a huge operative
surplus. Lufthansa, by any standard the measuring rod of the airline
business, used the services of Aerolíneas in Buenos Aires to perform
their routine maintenance in South America. The line had opened up to
trade new routes the world over, including the non-stop Buenos
Aires-Europe and the circumpolar (known here as "transpolar") Buenos
Aires-Auckland-Sydney.

The company was, deservedly, one of the few remaining reasons for
pride in an Argentina that had been almost destroyed by decades of
reaction after 1955 and particularly after 1976. So, it was not a
matter of chance that the Cavallo- Menem maffia, acting under the
orders received and agreements arrived at with the large banks of the
Paris and London Clubs, the IMF, and the World Bank, decided to give
it away as a _leading case_ to foreign capital.

No opposition was admitted. A repugnant media campaign was unleashed
on our population, still shivering after the experience of the
hyperinflationary economic coups by the financial
criminals. Politicians were bribed, it is said that some murders even
took place to obtain the silence of some. The banks were ravishing:
here you had a Peronist in power, who would undo anything Perón (or
the Argentineans in general since 1880, for that matter) had built up
in a century. The unions fought in isolation, because they knew both
that this was a crime against the country and a direct attack to
workers in the line.

The process was ruthlessly carried on, however, and the winners in the
bid were the lousy air transport managers of the then less than
mediocre Iberia, the Spanish national (state-owned)
airline. Privatizations! Colonizations, is the true name...

It is interesting to note that the Spanish bourgeoisie, eager to
become as imperialist as her trans-Pyrenaican counterparts, acted fast
and slyly.  Together with a patriotic lawyer in Argentina, Dr. Soñés,
my party and I attempted to carry the case to the
courts. Unfortunately, Soñés died unexpectedly and we could not hold
to the case. But, among other things that came to light, we observed
that in the first balance sheet of the company, that of the first year
after the plunder, there was a line for many hundreds of millions of
dollars, under the heading "Expenses associated to purchase". That is,
bribes.

It should be noted that the financial debt of the company, a debt that
had been imposed on the country by the IMF and the bankers, and a debt
that had never generated a cent of investment in Aerolíneas, was
absorbed by the Argentinean state at the moment of the give away of
Aerolíneas to the Spanish state. So that what the Spanish obtained was
a top quality company, with the best trained personnel available(1),
with an excellent image, with a whole country used to fly by the
company, full with all its electronic purchase systems, and so on.

The first thing they did was to destroy the electronic purchase
system. Any transaction, from now onwards, had to be decided in
Madrid. If you wanted to go from Salta to Bahía Blanca, or from Santa
Fe to Buenos Aires, the passage had to be generated in Madrid (reasons
for this will become apparent in a few lines). This implied a gross
problem of delays, of over and undersales, in general an
administrative mess. For months, we were not able to have a decent
reserves systems.

But worse still, the Spanish administration at first almost destroyed
the on board attention system. Then, when confronted with the
criticisms from the public, they began to stuff us as turkeys for
Thanksgiving Day. And, still worse, they immediately handed over to
Iberia all the best actives of the company. In Montreal, for example,
the terminal counter of Aerolíneas enjoyed an excellent
location. Immediately after the purchase, the counter was given to
Iberia, and Aerolíneas was kicked in the ass to the dark corner where
Iberia had been located for years. But this is nothing, yet. The
Spanish paid for the privatization with the sale of the planes. Old
planes of Iberia, or leased planes, replaced the brand new fleet that
the Argentine people had been constituting for decades (this is, I
guess what the bourgeoisie of the Judge Garzón understands as a return
for a favor: Iberia, during the 40s, began with four planes that
Argentina gave Spain for free....)  I have not seen Garzón put these
good democratic children to any trial...

They also used Aerolíneas to sell some of their lousy CASA planes (an
air hostess was killed by one of these planes, when the back door
opened up suddenly high in the air -an accident that was common in
these flying coffins that Spain had not been able to sell to any
country- and she fell down on the Córdoba mountains: there had been 17
reclamations by the unions against bad maintenance of that particular
door by the management of the airline, of course nobody has been
punished by this death to this day). The company was broken down into
different "business units", then joined into one again, wages were
reduced, labor time was expanded, people were fired, routes were lost
in the international arena, the operations in Europe were centered in
Madrid, and so on.

Of course, under such a leadership the line not only became a
dangerous nightmare, it also accumulated a huge financial debt
(remember, they received the company without debt, which is still
being paid for by us: no wonder, the debts of the Argentinean
state-owned companies were simply a manner to indebt _the country_
with the bankers). Finally, now it is facing bankrupcy.

But, here is the cherry on top of the ice cream: the management of
Aerolíneas was all right-wing, something the Spanish socialists of
course were aware of.  Thus, funds diverted to Spain (see why the
concentration in Madrid?) were thoroughly used to finance the campaign
of the current Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar. This, the
socialists were not _equally_ aware of, but they were aware,
nevertheless. That is, they served their bourgeoisie as all Social
Democrats have been doing since 1914. And this bourgeoisie, now, wants
to put an end to the Aerolíneas swindle. They are forced by agreements
in the European Union to release their grip of this dead carcass of
financial debts, fading services, rundown planes, lost routes and
distressed remaining personnel.

So that, they decide on a crash course. They propose a plan to "save"
the line, a plan which implies more working hours, less pay, more
layoffs, less safety measures, an unacceptable plan to put it
clear. They send this bombshell to Argentina, and all the unions in
the air trade oppose them. What does the Government do? To sum it up
in a sentence: they act on behalf of the Spanish company. Many
examples of repugnant lackeyism are displayed, day after day, on this
sad issue. A few more spots, what do they do to the panther's skin?


N O T E S

(1) by those times, due to reasons of work, I was a frequent air
traveller, and had made friends with some of the cabin attendants in
the flights to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego.

Before Menem gave away the company to the Spanish, there had been a
timid attempt under Alfonsín to partly give it to the Swedish company
(of course, Menem had oppossed violently to the attack on our
sovereignty that this implied, one of the reasons why he obtained the
popular vote in 1989!). Swedish inspectors had come to Argentina, just
to see what the hell were they being offered. They were deeply amazed
at what they saw.

On a flight to Ushuaia, I was talking with one of the cabin
attendants.Ushuaia was by those times one of the most difficult
airports in Argentina for commercial flight, probably in the
world. Some explanation is necessary here: the planes used a short,
military landing stripe which lay across the valley, that is with the
mountains on the Northern end, and the sea immediately on the Southern
end. The approach manoeuver implied a series of slow downward
spiralling circles, a final approach that took the plane only a few
meters over the hill tops, and an almost emergency stop on the short
strip, which, moreover, was not flat (as seen from the cockpit, it had
the vertical shape of an inverted soft U, with a bulge in the middle
and final softly protruding butt near the sea). It was usual that
passengers would applaud when they finally landed. And, mind you, we
are talking of Boeing 737s, among the most manoeuvrable commercial
planes on the air.

Well, as I told you, I was talking with a cabin attendant. The conversation 
fell on the recent visit by the Swedish experts. "They did not believe what 
they saw", told me this man, "When we landed at Ushuaia, the "Olaf" -these 
experts were called "Olafs" by the workers- was pale, and just muttered "No 
Swedish pilot would dare to do this"".
2. ------- Forwarded message follows -------
Subject:                Aerolíneas 
Date sent:              Thu, 31 May 2001 08:44:49 -0300

BUENOS AIRES, 31(PSI).- AEROLÍNEAS ARGENTINAS EN 
MANOS DE LA MAFIA ESPAÑOLA SIGUE EN SITUACIÓN 
CRÍTICA. 

Luego de su pobre y deslucida actuación ante los personeros de la SEPI
en Madrid, la titular de la cartera de Trabajo, Patricia Bullrich no
titubeó en responsabilizar por el fracaso de su viaje a España al
dirigente Ricardo Cirielli, secretario general de la Asociación del
Personal Técnico Aeronáutico (APTA), acusándolo de mantener una
postura intransigente frente al Plan Director propuesto por el ente
español que actúa como encubridor del vaciamiento de Aerolíneas
Argentinas.

La funcionaria de la administración de Fernando de la Rúa en un acto
de autoritarismo fue más allá y anunció que pedirá en la Justicia la
cancelación de la personería gremial de la organización sindical, como
si el hecho de que ésta defienda los intereses de sus integrantes,
negándose a convalidar otra rebaja de sueldos y aceptar más de 400
cesantías, fuera causal para perder la personería que ostenta.

Cirielli acusó a Patricia Bullrich de actuar a tono con ?las peores
dictaduras?, en reacción a la amenaza de esta de quitarle la
personería a su sindicato, y agregó que ?la ministra viajó a Madrid
sólo para mostrarle al rey que tiene todos los deberes hechos?,
completó el gremialista a su regreso de la capital española, donde se
negó a aceptar el plan de salvataje que propone la Sociedad Estatal de
Participaciones Industriales (SEPI).

Por su parte los trabajadores de la Asociación del Personal
Aeronáutico (APA) que mantienen campamentos en el Aeroparque de Buenos
aires y en el Aeropuerto Internacional de Ezeiza bloqueando las
salidas de los vuelos de Iberia, realizarán hoy a las 13 una
movilización en Cochabamba 2900, esquina Jujuy, para protestar frente
a un edificio de Telefónica que alberga en dos pisos oficinas de
Aerolíneas Argentinas.


Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxx