Conference Agenda

Two different air navigation services unions, in Uruguay (ACTAU) and Argentina (ATEPSA), were able to overcome the challenges posed by a history of military control in the industry; deep economic crises in both countries; repressive essential work laws; and the crisis of the Covid pandemic. The power resources approach to union transformation shows that trade unions are not solely at the mercy of major societal trends and crises, but rather they have the option of making strategic choices.

Air traffic control workers are key to the viability and safety of global transport value chains. These workers hold the moment-by-moment responsibility for the protection of human life. They work extremely long hours with heavy workloads, poor conditions and are paid far below other comparable professions. The work of air traffic controllers is highly regulated by national and international laws and requires extensive training. Air traffic controllers are recognized by the ILO as one of the occupational groups with the highest occupational stress. Due to its essential public service nature, labour disputes require mechanisms for self-regulation

During the Covid pandemic, commercial passenger flights declined or stopped, while the number of cargo flights expanded. The workload of air traffic controllers increased as they dealt with massive changes in flight patterns and scheduling. Essential worker laws were used to deny aviation workers of their fundamental right to strike, organise, and bargain.

The three authors have extensive direct knowledge of and participatory research experience with aviation unions in South America. The research was conducted between 2017 and 2022 and includes 560 hours of interviews with workers, trade union, and governmental representatives.

The authors examine how, during these times of crisis, the unions revitalized themselves, increased their organisational power and democratic structures, learned from each other, won groundbreaking improvements in working conditions, and developed a strategy of impacting global value chains using safety regulations to protect the public, flight crew members, and themselves.

Latin America is one of the regions that has been most strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The main aim of this paper is to assess the dynamics of family income inequality and its components since the onset of the pandemic in six Latin American countries -Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru and Uruguay-.

Data coming from national household surveys is employed to estimate inequality indicators and to analyse the effect of different income sources through an econometric decomposition method. The study emphasises the behaviour of informal employment (and of labour incomes coming from informal jobs) as it is one of the major factors associated to the evolution of labour incomes and its distribution during the period under analysis. The distributive effects of cash transfer programmes and policies to support formal employment during the pandemic is particularly assessed.

While there is empirical evidence on the impact of COVID-19 on the labour market, incomes and inequality in Latin America, this paper makes several contributions on this regard. First, to the best of our knowledge, this study is the first that looks at the evolution of income distribution until the third quarter of 2021, almost two years since the onset of the pandemic. Second, the use of data for six countries –that account for more than 50% of the total population in the region– provides a broad picture of the impacts of COVID-19 in Latin America, as it makes it possible to consider cases with different occupational and income structures and dynamics during this crisis. Third, unlike some previous studies, in this paper we evaluate the distributive changes observed without resorting to assumptions or simulations. Finally, this study pays particular attention to the dynamics of labour informality and its impacts on inequality, taking into account the atypical behaviour that informal employment has had during this crisis.

The unequalizing impact of the worsening of the labour market during the contraction phase was mainly associated with the significant loss of informal, low-paid, jobs. This effect was partially offset by the equalizing role of cash transfers policies. An opposite impact of these income sources appears during the recovery phase, as most countries gradually reduced or stopped those transfers as employment and, therefore, labour incomes partially recovered. Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic inequality was higher than 2019 in almost all countries studied exacerbating existing high-income gaps in one of the world's most unequal regions.