Who are responsible for the strike of air traffic controllers that left millions in losses and thousands affected by flight cancellations

Travelers who arrived at the airport on Holy Thursday to rest for the long holiday were met with bad news: there was a stoppage of air traffic controllers that forced flights to be rescheduled and airports in Cusco, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Trujillo and Tacna closed. The measure affected more than 8,000 passengers and it was estimated that losses reached S/40 million soles, in airline tickets and tourism expenses, according to Carlos Canales, president of the Peruvian National Chamber of Tourism (Canatur), but who is responsible for all this?

Jorge Perlacios, chairman of the board of directors of the Peruvian Corporation of Airports and Commercial Aviation (Corpac), reached an agreement with the workers of the Unified Union of Air Traffic Controllers of Peru (SUCTA Peru) and, although the strike was lifted on the same day, many passengers had already been affected.

On the same day, the Minister of Transport and Communications, Nicolás Bustamante, said that the portfolio of Labor, chaired by Betssy Chavez, should declare for indicating that the strike by air traffic controllers that caused chaos at Peruvian airports was declared “appropriate”.

“Our concern has been to see that the service is restored, and then the evaluation will come. (...) I believe that the Ministry of Labour has all its legal mechanisms to be able to issue or adopt a decision,” he told the press.

Indeed, through a Director-General Resolution that was published last Friday, April 1, the Ministry of Labour and Employment Promotion (MTPE) had declared the SUCTA Peru strike appropriate, which wreaked havoc on the main airports of Peru this Holy Thursday.

Corpac had to call on the workers' union to put down its measure of force because “it harms the country's economic recovery and prioritizes dialogue”.

“We call on the members of SUCTA Peru to make a commitment to our country, solidarity with travelers and the good image of our nation despite the difficult economic situation we have been going through,” the document reads. After a few hours they reached an agreement.

IT IS CLEANED

Minister Bettsy Chavez stated that at no time was this strike authorized and that her office did not offer her that power. However, it considered strikes to be a “constitutional right” .

“The Ministry of Labour does not authorize or prohibit strikes. They are a constitutional right. When it is declared appropriate, it is because the strike is communicated for the purposes of the discount. This means that a trade union organization has fulfilled all the formal requirements of the collective employment relationship law. When is the legality of the strike declared? When Sunafil evaluates that it is worn regularly and that happened on Wednesday,” he explained in RPP Noticias.

The head of Labor and Employment Promotion stated that the strike by air traffic controllers was considered “illegal” when it affected airflow.

“It is on Thursday that this assumption of legality is broken because article 82 of the law on collective relations was violated, having affected legal property, in this case, flights. This agreement is broken and the Labor portfolio declares the strike illegality,” he said, adding that “at no time does the Ministry of Labor give the go-ahead to leave thousands of Peruvians in the situation left by thousands of Peruvians. That was not authorized.”

Along the same lines, it was Juan Lira Carranza, director of the Directorate General for Fundamental Rights and Health at Work, who stated that the origin of a communication, reporting a work stoppage, was a regular procedure in accordance with procedures established by law, but the MTPE did not authorize this strike .

“After the issuance of this Resolution, the ministry held four meetings with the union and the company, on 7, 11, 12 and 13 April, where unfortunately no agreement could be reached. These calls for meetings continued, so that a fifth meeting was reached on the 14th and at 3pm an agreement was reached suspending the stay,” he said.

Lira Carranza said that Corpac had to have taken the forecasts of the case since March 29, when the paralysis of air traffic controllers was announced and the union could have allocated a number of workers to fulfill the essentials of the service and not be stranded passengers.

INTERPELLATION

For Congresswoman Patricia Chirinos of Avanza Pais, there is only one culprit for what happened last Thursday: Betssy Chavez. She therefore announced a motion for interpellation against the Minister of Labour, although she is still collecting signatures.

“Betssy Chavez's irresponsibility in the air traffic controllers' strike left thousands of tourists stranded, generating millions of losses for the country. Faced with this and other mismanagement in the MTPE, I have filed a motion for interpellation against the Minister of Labour,” the parliamentarian wrote on her Twitter account.

In the interpelatory document, there are also other questions such as the increase in the minimum living wage that “highlight her lack of intellectual honesty in carrying out her thesis to opt for the title of lawyer, her links with characters involved in the crime of trafficking in land and money laundering, as well as others. questions that call into question their transparency in holding such a high - scale office”.

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