Argentina's government has extended for another week a leave of absence for all workers at the Télam state news agency as it confinues its efforts to shut the outlet.
Bosses at the firm also offered a voluntary retirement programme, employees of the agency on Monday, it was revealed.
An email sent to the workers by Diego Chaher, Télam's trustee, and obtained on Monday by AFP, states: "The dispensation of work leave with pay is extended for seven days."
Last week, following an announcement by far-right president Javier Milei that he would close the state news company for allegedly being an instrument "of propaganda," the government had suspended the agency's 700 workers for seven days with pay and fenced off its headquarters in Buenos Aires.
"This week we will know the plan that the government is designing for the closure and the fate of each of the employees," Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni said when announcing the closure.
No plan has yet emerged and some onlookers say that achieving the government's goal will not be easy.
Lawmaker Margarita Stolbizer, a member of the pro-dialogue bloc Hacemos Coalición, observed on the X social network this week that "it is not possible to eliminate by decree bodies created by law."
The measure generated a rapid reaction from Télam workers, who held a rally and set up an encampment at the door of one of the headquarters.
A website, "Somos Télam" ("We are Télam"), has been set up to continue publishing articles and for the issuing of communiqués from workers.
Tomás Eliaschev, a journalist and Télam union delegate, said that on Monday, after a workers' assembly at the building of the Central General de Trabajadores (CGT) umbrella union group, employees voted to reject the government's voluntary redundancy proposal.
"It is not voluntary because it is done under the framework of extortion," said Eliaschev.
He stressed that Télam's headquarters are still fenced off and surrounded by police.
He also announced that workers will present a bill so that the agency can "continues to exist, is under parliamentary control and becomes an even more democratic and federal Télam."
"We are the first to want Télam to improve, but there is no way we are going to let them erase almost 80 years of history with the stroke of a pen," he added.
President Milei announced the closure of the agency during his speech marking the opening of normal Congress sessions, saying it had been "used for decades as an agency of Kirchnerite propaganda" – referring to the political ideology of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and her late husband, former president Néstor Kirchner.
In 2018, during former president Mauricio Macri’s administration, Télam went through a traumatic downsizing with the dismissal of 357 workers, some of whom were later reinstated by court order.
Télam was created as a mixed public-private initiative in April 1945 by then-labour secretary Juan Domingo Perón, who would go on to serve three terms as president.
In 1959, under the presidency of Arturo Frondizi, it was privatised and renamed "Télam Sociedad Anónima, Periodística, Radiofónica, Cinematográfica, Comercial, Inmobiliaria y Financiera.”
Four years later, after the overthrow of Frondizi in a military coup, President José María Guido closed Télam for allegedly "disseminating false and biased information." In 1968, it was nationalised by dictator Juan Carlos Onganía.
Until last month, Télam published more than 500 national news articles and 200 photos daily, as well as content for video and radio clients.
According to its website, the state news agency "is the only one in the country with a network of correspondents in all of the country's main cities and provinces.”
This regional role has taken on increasing importance following the 2017 closure of DyN (Agencia Diarios y Noticias) private news agency, which was heralded for its reporting in the nation’s more remote areas.
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