Workers at Argentina's largest media group rally to save 380 jobs from outsourcing.

[tenorly]

An estimated 380 print workers at the Rioplatense Graphic Arts (AGR) plant in Buenos Aires organized a cultural festival as part of a series of protests that began after they were locked out of their jobs this week by its parent company, the Clarín Group.

The employees, who occupied the plant on Monday, were violently - but unsuccessfully - repressed by the Federal Police on Tuesday and Wednesday; numerous workers were injured with rubber bullets, including some to the head. Print Workers Union (FGB) delegate Pablo Viñas described the police offensive as "an ambush ordered while we were meeting at the Labor Ministry's Bureau of Labor Relations."

Police were later revealed to be spying on the workers occupying the plant from news vans supplied by the Clarín Group itself.

Viñas blamed Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, part of the right-wing Mauricio Macri administration, for these actions, pointing out that she had been informed of the decision to shutter the plant before the employees themselves were locked out on Monday morning.

The dispute intensified further on Thursday after the Labor Ministry refused to grant a compulsory conciliation order despite Argentine labor law provisions that require it in cases where an employer, save for bankruptcies, is shedding 15% of its work force or more. The Clarín Group, moreover, owes AGR employees two weeks' back pay.

Representatives of the Clarín Group, Argentina's largest media conglomerate, stated that the plant, which produces books and special publications for the group, was being closed in response to growing losses, which reached 118 million pesos ($8 million) in the first nine months of 2016.

Viñas, however, believes the media group seeks to replace the 380 union jobs at the plant with unregistered workers at far lower wages and without the social security and health insurance costs a unionized workforce implies.

The Clarín Group, which controls nearly half the media and cable market in Argentina as well as a fourth of its broadband, reported a net income of $330 million on $3 billion in sales during 2015 and remained similarly profitable in 2016 despite a sharp recession. The group benefited from a media market deregulation decree signed by President Macri days after taking office 13 months ago, as well as from an anti-trust waiver that allowed the group to acquire mobile phone carrier Nextel Argentina in June.

The group's media outlets were staunch supporters of Macri's 2015 bid for the presidency, which he narrowly won. One of Macri's most vocal critics, the 88-year-old leader of the human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Hebe de Bonafini, called for support for the AGR staff "because you might be next."

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