Union fight: Justice ruled against Luis Barrionuevo and confirmed Dante Camaño's electoral triumph

Trade union leader Luis Barrionuevo suffered a further setback in justice: Chamber I of the National Chamber of Labour Appeals ratified the validity of the elections in which Dante Camaño, his former brother-in-law, was re-elected as head of the Capital Section of the Union of Tourism Workers, Hoteliers and Gastronomics of Argentina (UTHGRA), by dismissing his appeal against a first-instance judgment by Judge Ana Clara Alfie that had left those elections on December 2 firm.

Faced with the ruling in his favor, Camaño announced that he will assume this Wednesday, at 18, his new four-year term. Barrionuevo, meanwhile, could file an appeal to the Court to try to reverse the House ruling and achieve new elections in the Buenos Aires union. When asked by Infobae about whether he has any recourse before the Justice, he only replied: “Always”.

Enrique Catani and María Cecilia Hockl, members of Chamber I of the National Chamber of Labor Appeals, rejected the appeal of the Blue List of Capital Gastronomics, whose candidate for secretary general is Humberto Ballhorst, against Judge Alfie's ruling in favor of a precautionary measure in the Camaño sector, which had called for the suspension of the elections due to alleged irregularities and that it was ordered by the Electoral Board dominated by the Barrionuevo sector.

The December 2 elections in the UTGHRA Capital Sectional marked the breakdown of the relationship between Barrionuevo and Camaño for more than 40 years. The differences between the two were accentuated after the author of the phrase “Nobody makes money working” separated from his wife, Graciela Camaño. There the mutual accusations began: near Barrionuevo they claim that there were discussions because Camaño has management problems, lost delegates and closed the union in the pandemic, while in the environment of the head of the Buenos Aires branch they talk about differences in the handling of union funds by the part of the Buenos Aires subsidiary of Barrionuevo and warn that the chief gastronomic wants to keep the bank deposits of the Capital section of about 40 million dollars.

The elections were held in all sections of the country and allowed a new re-election of Barrionuevo at the national level, but in the vote of the Buenos Aires subsidiary they ended in a scandal.

The elections in the Gastronomic Union were held on December 2 throughout the country. Barrionuevo was re-elected nationally), while in the Capital Sectional the vote ended in scandal: both lists accused themselves of having made maneuvers to win and of having taken barrabvas to the union headquarters in Salta in 1300.

Even so, the elections began normally and the barrionuevista Electoral Board suspended them because the Camaño government did not endorse the entry of prosecutors from the Blue List to control the vote. However, Camaño went ahead with the elections and announced his victory. After not knowing the result, the Board of Elections called for a vote again on March 15.

Judge Alfie suspended the new elections and left the vote that took place on December 2 firm. “The election of the CABA Section of UTHGRA was suspended because it was considered a serious irregularity that the prosecutors on one of the lists had not been allowed to accompany the ballot box. However, I do not notice that the above circumstance is of the seriousness necessary for the determination of anything less than the suspension of the electoral act”, considered the judge on 2 March.

In their ruling, the camaristas Catani and Hockl considered that in the December 2 elections “there were no irregularities of such magnitude” as those denounced by the National Electoral Board, as did the opposition list, and stressed that “conduct that violates the rights of the freedom of association or freedom of association”.

“Voters' free expression is not affected in the first instance,” they added.

In a Blue List event held at the Argentine Boxing Federation last Monday, Barrionuevo not only criticized Judge Alfie (“she did not read or analyze what what happened in the elections,” he said) but said that “she is going to be displaced this week” and that “the House” (of Labor Appeals) will rule against Camaño and call for a vote in the union.

“Justice stuck its queue, but on March 23 the term (of Camaño) ends; his days are numbered,” warned the gastronomic leader. However, a week later, Alfie was not displaced and the Labor Appeals Chamber ruled in a direction contrary to what it anticipated.

The fight between Barrionuevo and Camaño will not stop despite the sentence. The national leader of UTHGRA has already kicked his former brother-in-law out of the secretariat and the presidency of the social work, and could take other measures to limit his scope of action: unions constitute a form of union association where sectionals are heavily dependent on their national leadership.

This first major battle ended with Barrionuevo being judicially defeated. And with Camaño ratified at the head of the most powerful section (39,000 of the 64,000 members that were before the pandemic remained). A result that is in line with Barrionuevo's electoral setback in the Mar del Plata Sectional (the second in number of members after the Buenos Aires): its candidate, Nancy Todoroff, failed to be re-elected in the last elections because she lost to Pablo Santín, a leader sponsored by Facundo Moyano, deputy secretary of the Toll Union.

These are shocking data for trade unionism and that seemed unthinkable in a true empire that the experienced chief of gastronomics had kept under his tight control since 1985.

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