‘Today we are all Aerolíneas Argentinas,’ exclaimed Hugo Moyano, Secretary General of Argentina’s labour federation, from the steps of the National Congress. The crowd responded with a cacophony of triumphant cheers and drum-pounding. Moyano’s proclamation, delivered on 21 August last year, gave a sense of finality to the countless stickers and leaflets decorating Buenos Aires signposts and sidewalks with the assertion: ‘We are all Aerolíneas’. The House of Deputies authorized the Government to purchase the struggling airline several hours later.
Argentina’s four airworkers’ unions, with the support of the National Confederation of Labour, began their campaign to expropriate the nation’s flagship airline in June, after the Spanish travel company Grupo Marsans announced that it could no longer meet the company’s payroll. The unions have traditionally maintained a hostile posture to foreign ownership, striking repeatedly since 2005 and calling on the State to take back its leading role.
The Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Government listened. The President herself, whose Justicialist Party maintains close ties to Argentina’s powerful unions, spearheaded the drive to nationalize the company, claiming in a speech on 21 July that the company’s poor performance had obliged ‘the State to take the decision to guarantee service’.
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