January 26, 2016
Argentina has ordered striking aviation employees to resume wage talks with LATAM Airlines and return to work, after a walkout grounded four flights out of Buenos Aires' main airport.
The workers, who belong to Argentina's Union of Commercial Airline Senior and Professional Personnel, went on strike at dawn at Buenos Aires' Ezeiza Airport over stalled pay negotiations.
Labour relations are prickly in Argentina, where unions routinely butt heads with private companies and the government over the scale of pay increases.
A spokeswoman confirmed the mandatory negotiations but said she had no further details.
The strike is a sign of what is to come for President Mauricio Macri ahead of wage talks with the country's most powerful unions in the coming weeks. Macri oversaw the lifting of capital controls that led to a sharp devaluation of the peso.
LATAM operates TAM in Brazil and LAN Airlines in Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru and Colombia.
In a separate dispute with the Argentine Federation of Aeronautic Personnel, or FAPA, the government earlier this month ordered salary talks between pilots and LAN Argentina.
Union officials said both pay rows would fester if the company did not offer a bigger salary increase.
"At the end of the month the compulsory talks between LAN Argentina and the FAPA union will end, and we're likely to have another conflict because the pay offer the company has made is very low," Sergio Mercau, a spokesman for an affiliated pilots union, told TV channel C5N.
(Reuters)