Before becoming the visible face of Javier Milei’s government and assuming office as Chief of Staff, Manuel Adorni had a little-known past: he tried to become a union leader. Newspaper reports revealed that he presented the documentation to create the Argentine Union of Delivery and Related Employees (SAEDA), at a time when he was working as a delivery employee.
The data draws attention due to the distance from its present. Today it is part of a government that promotes adjustment, privatizations, cuts and a sharp reduction in the role of the state. He went from trying to represent rank-and-file workers to integrating an administration that openly questions unions and sees them as structures of the past.
Official records show that Adorni was employed at the courier company Tesir SRL when he submitted the application for legal status for SAEDA. The Ministry of Labor did not approve the creation of the union. Over time, Adorni adopted a discourse completely aligned with labor deregulation and criticism of state intervention.
That contradiction—a past linked to unionism and a present within a government that seeks to limit it—generated comments from both sides of the divide. Infocielo described it like this: “The presidential spokesperson, now championed by extreme libertarianism, hides a recent past as a longing delivery unionist.”
For analysts, this turn shows a change in identity or an adaptation to the political climate. Adorni went from trying to organize precarious workers to being the main voice of an Executive that applies the “chainsaw” of adjustment. With his central role in the government, that past reappears as a discomfort that he and those around him prefer not to highlight.
The case also functions as a symbol of the era: in current politics, not only alliances change, but characters also change. And the historical tension between unions and the State today translates into another dichotomy: from frustrated unionist to libertarian official.
