But the organization was able to twist the story. Liniers, Retiro, Eleven, Mar del Plata, Mendoza, Rosario, Santa Fe, Trelew, Santiago del Estero, Cordoba, La Plata, among other terminals, joined the pandemic with more force, ensuring that each baggage handler and their families had access to food. Marches to the Ministry of Labor, judicial presentations, courts and blockades in the terminals. Noise, noise, noise, to be heard.
The first conclave of the porters arrived in 2018. For the first time they fraternized in the same space to discuss how to have a union that would make the utopia of having rights a reality, the first to receive a salary with a salary receipt.
The claims and the trunk organization remained mainly on the body and soul of Guido Mengía, who worked with the nucleus of SITMARA (Union of Luggage Workers of the Argentine Republic) not only food but also school supplies, access to finish studies, collection of the IFE before the paralyzed activity, even job training or camps for the children. All these claims were possible despite the distances and the conditions of survival, their salary is the tip. A network of union and political leaders helped support the trunk family and the possibility of facing a pandemic that killed by disease and the economic crisis. From bottom to top, from the last to the first, from the periphery to the center, in this land the new union took root.
The trunk takes its risks. It is demonstrated by those who died from Covid, such as Walter Escobar, delegate-worker in Formosa. Also the injured as it happened in Retiro when the lid of the warehouse hit the trunk a few days ago who was referred to the Buenos Aires public hospital where he fainted and bled due to the delay in care and finally ended up with three stitches in the head.
The mistreatment of employers in the terminals was daily before the union organization. To the point that the employers demanded a “tithe” to work and others forced them to cover the cleaning of the bathrooms.
THE STATE RECOGNIZES THE TRUNK
On August 31, 2021, by Resolution 519/2021 published in the Official Gazette, the porters appear with their union registration. Now everything looks different. Workers will have a salary receipt, contributions, Christmas bonus, paid vacations, and everything that exists in terms of labor laws.
Their recent and last big step was on February 8 when they held the first election of union authorities in the entire country. The national register of porters counts 9,874 and 89 percent of the members in SITMARA voted, most of whom came to vote with their families, wives and children, because this was a historic moment in the lives of these workers.
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The second in leading SITMARA is Christina Novas from the Zacarias terminal, from Puente La Noria in Lomas de Zamora. She sells tickets, “ticket clerk or agent” is the jargon of the workers, which by statute is incorporated for carrying parcel.
The porters have their prominent figures throughout the country: Gamboa, the singer-songwriter porter at the Luján terminal and devotee of the Virgin patron saint of Argentina. In the Patagonian city of Trelew, Marcelo has been carrying suitcases and parcels with one hand for 14 years, the left, because he has the right hand pointed. In the middle of the election, a young man appeared in jeans shorts and flip-flops, Iván Tierno, who plays first for Hurricane, for now a substitute. He entered the Liniers terminal at six in the morning and at noon he was going to take bus 46 to go to practice at La Quemita. Another prominent trunk in Liniers is the soccer player’s uncle, Carlos Tevez, who did not return to activity due to the coronavirus.
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Luggage workers had different ways to improve their working conditions. On the one hand, some proposed the cooperative format, how striking were the proposals of the employers or some local official, to legalize fraud by distorting the tool that worker cooperatives mean, but the porters realized that this was unpaid work , because there was too much recognition, since the terminals marked the entry and exit times, the CNRT gave them the tickets that are put in the passengers’ luggage, they had the platforms organized with each trunk, how to get to appear in the specifications of the terminal concession.
From now on, a new story begins for these workers from the peripheries and their families. Adding a new chapter to the history of organization of the Argentine working people that once again puts into effect the importance of organizing and fighting for better working and living conditions.
They made the concept of Pope Francis a reality: “No one is saved alone”. His faith and struggle will make his dreams come true.
Source: Ambito
