Marea Socialista stands in solidarity with Jose Bodas, general secretary of the FUTPV (Unitary Federation of Petroleum and Gas Workers) and a life-long oil worker, who is the target of lay-off threats from the administrative sectors of the PDVSA and the PSUV bureaucracy, that often retaliates against those voices who reject the brutal anti-workers austerity plan of the national government.
Like Bodas, many workers throughout the country have been threatened, others suffered lay-offs, persecution or criminalization by the State as boss, led by a government that became the worst nightmare of the history books of the Venezuelan workers, who had their fundamental rights taken away, like wages, benefits, pensions or collective bargaining.
Working people in Venezuela face a work regime of hunger, imposed with fire and blood by Maduro´s government and his militaristic leadership, who criminally delivers us as semi-slave labor to transnational capitals, whether from the United States, Turkey, Iran, Russia or China. This situation also favors the traditional national bourgeoisie and the new rich that emerged from the embezzlement of the nation and corruption.
Considering the catastrophic situation the impoverished people are facing, it is hard to digest the role that the CSBT (Bolivarian Socialist Union of Workers) is playing, obeying the government and contributing to the collapse and demobilization of part of the working class, that sees how union leaders defend their personal privileges. Privileges that they have access to thanks to fulfilling their shameful role as Madurist strike breakers.
Our solidarity with Jose Bodas comes from a perspectiveof struggle and the reconstruction of a working class union movement with complete autonomy. As Marea Socialista we are part of “Trabajadores en Lucha” (Workers in Struggle), where we work with different unions and political organizations. We promote this genuine power of the workers, without betting on shortcuts nor alliances with political and union sectors that follow leaders committed to foreign interests that go against our class interests.
We are in a complex context of crisis that demands a great capacity of analysis and observation of the different actors in this scenario. The government holds the main responsibility of our disgraces, and as such we must confront it, but we believe that we must do so with complete political independence and proposals that focus on a working class solution; so the struggle to recover what they took from us becomes a struggle against Guaido´s “Plan País” that only wants to continue drowning us. And it is also against the other parts of the traditional right wing that call for a military intervention in the country, whose more visible faces are María Corina Machado y Antonio Ledezma.
With this spirit, we have demanded the freedom of Rodney Alvare, rejected the sentence against Ruben Gonzales and support our class brothers that have struggled for a wage according to the art 91 of the Constitution, against Memorandum 2792 and resisting the adversities. With this spirit we reject the threats against Jose Bodas and demand the respect of his condition of worker and union leader.
Marea Socialista