More than 75 union leaders from the Latam Group planned to meet in Santiago, Chile, on Tuesday to discuss expanding a labor dispute by Chilean LAN Airlines maintenance and ground support staff to Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and Paraguay. 

The union leaders meeting in Santiago represent more than 50,000 mechanics, pilots, flight attendants and ground workers in the Latam Group. They claim unanimity in denouncing what they call anti-worker practices and the multiple conflicts with aviation workers throughout the region. The conflicts include a strike in Chile and protests over the firing in October of the president of the Ecuadorian aviation union, Jimena Lopez.

At Santiago airport on Saturday passengers “were absent” from LAN check-in counters during a demonstration by striking LAN workers and their families, according to the Latam Network of Unions. The alliance consists of Latam affiliates of the International Federation of Transport Workers (ITF), which includes some 700 unions representing 4.5 million transport workers in some 150 countries.

Last Thursday unionized maintenance and ground support staff at LAN regional affiliate LAN Express went on strike and asked for government mediation after they rejected the company’s latest offer. Formed in 2012 with the merger of Chile’s LAN and Brazil’s TAM, Latam said a contingency plan has allowed for uninterrupted operations despite the strike, which involves 881 workers. The union has asked for a 15-percent pay raise and improved working conditions.

“We have to face as workers the irregularities which we’ve lived with for many years, where management require us to make sacrifices so their dreams can be realized,” said Luis Chavez, president of the Union of Workers of LAN Express (Sindilanex). “The offer that Lan Chile made this week as part of the good offices of the Labour Inspectorate (following the strike ballot), keeps the workers of the region’s largest airline in poverty, with unjust wages, below the minimum wage—about 211,000 pesos ($345) on average.”