The Aviation and Airport Workers’ Union (Sitava) has reiterated its call for the privatization of Azores Airlines to be halted, claiming that it is a “deal that can only come from China” and “ruinous” for the region and its workers.
“It is therefore essential and urgent to stop this process of destroying the SATA group, which will bring brutal costs in the medium and long term to the entire Azores region. The ongoing privatization must be annulled as a matter of urgency; it’s always time to learn something,” Sitava warns.
In a press release, the union once again expressed its concerns about the privatization of Azores Airlines, SATA’s subsidiary airline that operates flights outside the Azores, adding that it “has been following very closely everything that has been done and said” about the Azorean aviation group.
“It is with a mixture of surprise and astonishment that we have witnessed the total lack of financial and management control concerning the present and future of the group,” Sitava points out, insisting on calling on the regional government (PSD/CDS-PP/PPM) to remove the objective of privatizing Azores Airlines ‘from the agenda,’ because ‘privatization is not an inevitability’.
For the union structure, Azores Airlines and handling “do not have to be privatized, nor should they be,” not least because the Azores are an outermost region of the European Union, which gives “extraordinary rights to the Portuguese state to preserve the region’s communications infrastructure, where the SATA group is a core element and irreplaceable by private interests.”

“It is important to demystify that the European Commission, under the European treaties, does not (and cannot) demand the privatization of anything. It was the Portuguese government that set the goal of privatizing the company and restructuring it. A political decision which, if it comes to fruition, will turn the government into the executioner and gravedigger of the SATA group and the Azoreans,” the union points out.
In the note, the union guarantees that it will defend the workers and their rights “against this economic and social crime in preparation,” in an allusion to privatization.
“All forms of struggle are legitimate,“ Sitava maintains, reiterating that the break-up of the SATA group ‘will be ruinous for the Azorean people and for the Azores, in a ’deal that can only come from China” for those who buy “free of the debt that, as always, is on the public’s side.”

In Diário dso Açores-Osvaldo Cabral, director

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.