By: Jean Mendoza(@j_mendoza77)

Venezuelan workers face a new employers’ onslaught against wages and social benefits

The recent proposal of the Venezuelan business sector, disseminated in digital media, which advocates reforming the Organic Labor Law with the alleged purpose of “facilitating” salary increases, is nothing more than another recent chapter of a systematic strategy to dismantle the historical labor conquests of our working class.

As we rightly point out to our class and struggle comrades: We cannot fall into any blackmail. The same actors that for more than a decade have been accomplices in the hijacking of the Venezuelan wage -through induced hyperinflation and the systematic violation of Art. 91 of the Constitution (minimum wage with reference to the basic food basket) that reduced the real income to cents on the dollar, the memorandum-circular 2792 and the massive bonus that stripped the income of its wage character- now pretend to ask for “ransom” for our own confiscated right. The price? Nothing less than our social benefits, calculated according to the last salary earned under Article 122 of the LOTTT, a principle they seek to modify.

The false dilemma they present – “making rights more flexible in exchange for raises”- willfully ignores that we, the workers, have already paid the highest price: twelve years of pulverized wages (“zero wages”, less than 1% coverage of the food and basic baskets), families separated by the diaspora, obstacles to the enjoyment of rights such as health, education and food, sacrificed on the altar of failed economic policies and business complicities. The excuse that “increases generate inflation” is disproved by the brutal inflation of the years 2023-2024-2025 and 2026, which occurred without significant salary increases since 2022. But, in addition, for many years, both the private employer and the State employer, due to the ultra-precarious salaries, have also brought their labor costs to “zero” and that is not enough for them.

his attempt against the benefits already destroyed by the miserable wages, is part of a broader pattern: wage flattening, freezing of collective bargaining agreements, attack on union institutions and criminalization of labor protest. It is no coincidence that this proposal arises when international sanctions are progressively lifted, dismantling another of their recurrent excuses and when sectors of the working class begin to show a certain recovery of the willingness to fight and less fear in the face of repression. As is the case of our brothers in the Oil Sector, the University Sector and the Basic Industries of Guayana.

We, the workers, say clearly: we oppose any reform that would mean a deterioration or regression. We adhere to the constitutional principle of progressiveness of labor rights, which establishes that any modification must be to increase benefits, never to reduce them. The LOTTT, won through historic struggles, cannot be dismantled through legal trickery that seeks to transfer the burden of the crisis – “which we did not cause” – exclusively to our shoulders.

MESSAGE TO THE WORKERS OF VENEZUELA AT THE PRESENT JUNCTURE, AND TO THE WORKERS’ CENTERS THAT WERE CALLED AGAIN THIS JANUARY 19 TO REESTABLISH THE SOCIAL DIALOGUE TABLE:

Partners:

In the face of this new attempt to violate our rights, our response must be united, conscious and firm. We will not allow them to turn our already devastated wages into a bargaining chip to legitimize even greater plunder.

Let us defend the Constitution, which in its Article 91 establishes the right to a sufficient salary that allows us to live with dignity and cover basic material, social and intellectual needs. And which also establishes that one of the references for its calculation must be the cost of the basic food basket (which is currently around 1000 dollars). These principles are non-negotiable.

Let us defend the LOTTT and its Article 122, which guarantees that our social benefits are calculated on the real integral salary. We will not accept calculators that subtract.

Let us defend trade union freedom, threatened by persecution, dismissals and smear campaigns. Our trade union organizations are the dike of containment against the bosses’ authoritarianism and state indifference.

We are not alone. The memory of past struggles accompanies us, and the urgency of the present summons us. Let us reject any dialogue based on the premise of ceding rights. Let us demand true collective bargaining, without restrictive memorandums, with wage increases that truly recover purchasing power, with respect for collective bargaining and with the reactivation of the labor inspectorate in favor of the worker, not the interests of the bosses.

While the government, with the applause of the exploiting national and transnational private capital, hands over the oil to the invading foreign capital, the working class will continue to be deprived of its salary and social benefits, of a dignified life. Sovereignty means respecting national possessions and the rights of the people!

Let us articulate the response of the working class and advance in the unity and strength of our mobilization. Let us bring together all the struggles for wages. Let us put a stop to any new dispossession. Let us recover what belongs to us.

Not one step back in what has been conquered!

Wages are not negotiated, they are defended!

For decent work in a Venezuela with social justice!

The working class, united, will never be defeated!