We fight for the fulfilment of Art. 91 of the Constitution: minimum wage= basic basket.
In Venezuela, the government and the bosses have stripped the working class of almost all the value of its work. Wages are so miserable that we could say that we pay to work and subsidize the parasitic government. The minimum wage disappears in the commute to our workplaces. There is nothing left to support ourselves and our family. The government wants us to settle for CLAP boxes and bonds, which not only are absolutely insufficient, but also come out of the unpaid salary and serve as a mechanism of social and political clientelist control, complementing the growing repression.
We are hostages of the bureaucracy and capital, that use us as an almost free workforce, to make us pay the cost of the bureaucratic-capitalist state, the corruption and the debt, and offer us as a super-cheap workforce to transnational corporations, whether they be from the US, China, Russia, Europe or another country, with which the new bourgeoisie and the ruling military caste maintains their corrupt businesses in the country.
The bosses take advantage of this, but in many cases they are
forced to offer wages above the official minimum in order to not lose the
“human resources” that leave to try their luck on their own and in
the informal economy, or join the massive emigration.
The government does not care; it substitutes the victims the
indirect lay-offs with the kids of the chamba, the militia, the return of
impoverished pensioners to precarious jobs, “express teachers”, etc.
This is useful to them to continue using the budget and money to
their convenience, for their policies and deals, usually linked to the dominant
economy of corruption. Meanwhile, they try to conserve their power and save
themselves from the attacks of the right wing opposition and imperialism, who
try to recover the control of the Venezuelan State in a direct way. Trump´s
sanctions worsen the people´s situation and threaten the nation´s independence
as never before.
They ended with the Bolivarian revolution: they got rid of just
about every residue of the conquests and rights we had achieved. This predating
and insatiable bureaucracy liquidated the revolution and replaced it with wild
capitalism, imposing an authoritarian political regime. They submit us to the cruellest
“economic package” applied by any neoliberal government under the
worst conditions of misery.
It is unknown for how long the people and the working class will
tolerate this situation, and there is uncertainty in the air. There is a
certain rekindling of social protest, particularly of the work class, of
defence and resistance against the stagnation of the political “solutions”
and the growing rejection of the two expressions of the political polarization.
The great majority of the people do not want Maduro and the corrupt PSUV
(though not finding a way to get rid of them), but it has discovered what
Guaido means: the theft of “humanitarian help”, another face of the
corruption, Trump´s intervention, the use of Venezuelan assets confiscated by
the imperialism to pay for the corrupt external debt, the antidemocratic
self-proclamation, the continuity of neoliberal policies but with other
protagonists.
We are in this terrible situation, the labor bureaucracies are
forced to babble an answer to continue in their position and prolong their
privileges. So we see Oswaldo Vera, former Labour Minister who is as pro-boss
as Piñate, who continues as “leader” of the CSBT while also being a
member of the “constituchimba” (ANC), using the same hunger recipe of
the official “half petro” as minimum wage, followed by Wills Rangel,
who today asks to anchor the minimum wage to the market value. It is a fraud or
a deceitful offer that ties the wage to a reference other than the one the
Constitution establishes. Because the Constitution (in Art. 91) sets a wage in
the legal currency (the bolivar) that corresponds to the cost of the basic
basket (food, goods and basic services for an average family). These
manipulators recently asked to adjust the “integral minimum wage” to
240 thousand bolivars: 160 thousand on the nominal account and 80 thousand with
the patria system. With current hiperinflation, that is not enough, not even
for a few days. They and the government completely violate the Constitution,
they do not even mention Article 91 and steal our wage as an elemental right of
the working class, reducing us to a semi-slave workforce.
Article 91 of the Constitution says:
“Every worker has the right to a salary that allows them to live with dignity and cover their and their family´s basic material, social and intellectual needs. Equal pay for equal work will be guaranteed and the participation in companies´ profits that corresponds to workers will be established. Wages are non-seizable and will be periodically and opportunely paid in the legal currency, with the exception of the food obligation according to the law. The state will guarantee workers of both public and private sectors a vital minimum wage that will be modified every year taking the cost of the basic basket as reference. The law will establish the form and procedure”.
The government does not calculate the cost of the basic basket or does not report it. Unofficial estimates show that the current minimum wage and the bureaucracy´s proposal do not even cover 2% of it and is also a minimum percentage of the food basket (only food and reproduction of the workforce). That is why we say that they maintain us at a zero wage, a non-wage; that the salary was eliminated in the Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro, the Army and the PSUV, burying the historical labor conquests of the Bolivariam revolution. Superexploitation is a state policy, for the transfer of wealth to new bourgeois sector that is emerging. This is what the working class must change with its struggle. To impose its non-wage and its anti-workers’ package of wild and bureaucratic capitalism, the government applies an instructive (memorandum 2792) that, in practice, eliminates collective bargaining and cancels the wage negotiation tables, which is also useful for the bosses.
The union sectors of the right wing opportunistically talk about “wages in dollars”, while they do not talk about what their party´s big businessmen do against the working class. This has to do with the economic plans they want to apply in Venezuela for an economy that works as an appendix of the United States.
They take advantage of the fact that the people feel the need of protecting their bolivars from hiperinflation, using the exchange or payment in dollars, and as the economy is “dollarizing” before the ineffectiveness of the government.
But the criteria of a decent and sufficient wage is not that, but the coverage of the basic basket and its automatic adjustment with its variation, because what matters is not the dollars but that the wages are enough. However, workers have the right to conserve the value of their wage in the way they consider most convenient. Knowing that businessmen obtain their profit or sell in dollars, those who work for them cannot want less. Anyway, if it is not enough for the basic basket or at least for the food basket, it will be an illusion. The basic basket is what defines Article 91 and we do have no reason to renounce it. Economic planning must guarantee the fulfilment of this constitutional right.
Against these positions of the union bureaucracy, whether they support Maduro or Guaido or answer to any other bourgeois political leadership, Marea Socialista maintains the struggle that began with the introduction of an appeal in the Supreme Court for the respect and application of Article 91 of the Constitution and the establishment of the minimum wage according to the cost of the basic basket and its mobility.
Having submitted this appeal does not mean we trust the Supreme Court that has not responded in over a year. In the omission of the justice: we want this demand to be useful to organizing and mobilizing in defence of our rights. Union leaders, activists and the working base can adhere to it and demand together the fulfilment of the constitutional wage. This is what we advocate from Trabajadores en Lucha, a space of coordination that we are part of. We propose the promotion of a national campaign and mobilization actions to make the government fulfil our demand. In this sense, we invite you to accompany us on September 17 to the Supreme Court at 10 am to present a letter insisting on the appeal with new adhesions.
Marea Socialista