MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bs. Aires City airport becomes a battlefield

The departures lounge of the Jorge Newbery metropolitan airport (Aeroparque) became a battleground early yesterday morning as police clashed with a group of airline workers who are against the government's decision to sell the state-run airline LAFSA to Chile's LAN.

Twenty demonstrators and three police officers were injured during the clashes. Two protesters were arrested.

At around 4.30am yesterday police resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets to crack down on a group of LAFSA workers who had spent the night in protest in the city airport.

The police move was ordered by Marcelo Saín, President Néstor Kirchner's recently-appointed airport security trustee. Saín took over the job in February, following a political scandal over the smuggling of 60 kilos of cocaine to Spain on a Southern Winds (SW) flight last September. Saín said that police only acted to prevent the protesting workers from taking over the check-in counters as early morning passengers were beginning to arrive.

"The airport's security was at stake. We would not allow them to take over restricted areas," said Saín.

The trustee also appeared in court to hand investigating Federal Judge María Servini de Cubría the tape of the incidents recorded by airport security cameras.

Saín also filed a criminal lawsuit against some of the protesters on charges of aggression and resistance to authority. He also took full responsibility for the police action.

"I was the one who ordered the police to act the way they did," he said.

The workers presented a completely different version. They denied trying to take over the check-in counters and said that police just cracked down on them in order to oust them from the airport.

"What the police did was brutal," said Ariel Basteiro, a national deputy and one of the leaders of the APA aeronautical workers union. "Never in 25 years of airline work have I seen anything like it."

LAFSA was created in 2002 to absorb the staff of two private airlines going bust: LAPA and Dinar. It now has some 850 employees.

Aero 2000-Lan Argentina ? 49-percent owned by Lan and 51 by two Argentine partners Jorge Pérez Alati and Manuel Benites ? will absorb over 1,000 employees from the state-run airline Líneas Aéreas Federales SA (Lafsa), and from Aerovip, Air Transport Undersecretary Ricardo Cirielli said last week.

Aero 2000 will cover the routes to Madrid, Miami, Santiago, Montevideo, Bariloche, Iguazú, Córdoba, Rosario, Mendoza, Calafate and Neuquén.

The LAFSA workers said that they will lack job stability and suffer worse working conditions under Lan Argentina.

Transport Secretary Ricardo Jaime said in a written statement after the incidents that the new company has pledged to guarantee jobs for LAFSA workers for "at least three years" and to respect their working conditions.

The unionists, however, are sceptical.

"Jaime says they can guarantee our jobs for three years but he knows they cannot do that," said Basteiro.(BAH)