By Marea Socialista
Venezuelan workers continue to suffer an absolutely suffocating standard of living in the midst of the advance of the Covid 19 pandemic, with lack of public services while suffering the authoritarianism of the government and its repressive forces, as we must also subsist without a salary that can at least cover our basic needs. It is true that the crisis generated by the government of Nicolás Maduro has been devastating for the great majority of the social and economic sectors of the country, but no other sector has been hit as hard as the working class.
It would be necessary to make a broader analysis not only on any country of the world order at present, but on the historical records. No example can be found and be compared to the destruction that has been inflicted on labor as a social fact in Venezuela in this century until 2021. It is a mark that Madurism and its bureaucratic political regime show to its allies of non-Western capitalism, with China and Russia at the forefront, but which, now protected by the Anti-Blockade Law, also summon North American investors and major European powers. Yes, this is perfectly understandable: Venezuela is a country under auction and its working class has been dispossessed so that this auction may take place under the best conditions for the capitalists, be they nationals or from wherever they come from.
The annihilation of wages is just the tip of the iceberg of the whole corrupt, mafia-like and surrenderist course chosen by the Maduro government and the militarist leadership that accompanies it. Today, this course is applauded by the large chamber of entrepreneurs at the national level, such as FEDECAMARAS, portraying in a more tangible way the co-responsibility of the private sector in the design of the crisis and how it has been unloaded on the shoulders of the great majority of Venezuelan men and women.
Workers continue without giving an effective response. Their protests have been partial, diminished and very weak from an organic and programmatic point of view. However, it would be incorrect not to mention that workers have shown themselves willing to fight above their workers unions and leaderships. That means that the greatest weight of state repression has fallen. Venezuelan jails are full of workers like Rodney Alvarez, Bartolo Guerra, Eudis Girot, Marcos Sabariego, among others.
Focusing on this year (2021), during the first week of January, the workers of Alimentos Kellogs in Maracay demonstrated demanding better salaries. The response of the company’s management was to suspend and prohibit the entry of its leaders to its facilities. A little more than a month later, the mobilization in Guayana was triggered, with the Sidoristas at the head, and whose main demand is that they comply with a salary equal to the cost of the basic food basket, as established in Art. 91 of the CRBV.
What does it take for the workers’ struggles to take off favorably?
Of course, it is not so easy to solve the question of how is it that the workers in Venezuela have been so overwhelmed in terms of their rights and living situation, and even more so to explain what are the most important reasons in view of the generalized panorama of demobilization and little capacity to confront the public and private employers’ onslaught. What we have tried to do from Marea Socialista is to socialize our diagnosis and propose a series of campaigns in unity of action that, we are convinced, designed together, would allow us to move to action in better conditions and to recover the correlation of forces for the fight.
Just as we have said that Madurism, beyond its disputes with the private sectors and their political expressions, counts on their complicity in the advance of an ultraliberal, anti-worker and deeply pro-police regime; both leaders have, at the same time, bureaucratic apparatuses at their service acting as transmission belts of their policies in the world of labor, such as the so-called Bolivarian Socialist Workers Central (CSBT) or the sadly famous CTV on the other hand. They are shells that genuinely do not move anyone and have no legitimacy whatsoever in front of their bases, but count on resources provided through their clientelistic relations, both logistically and economically.
Seen from the bottom up, there is an urgent task for the workers to overcome those leaderships of worker-selling bureaucrats and their role of being the big stumbling block functional to the government and its reactionary policies. In this sense, we consider that recovering the discussions in a democratic manner in each workplace, with true workers’ democracy, is one of the greatest antidotes to the first control that these eternal bureaucrats have meant, and to open the way for new leaderships to emerge in the heat of the struggles.
It has been more than demonstrated that wages are the first and foremost demand nestled in the heart of the workers. Without wages there are no collective contract discussions, there are no benefits at real possible value, no pensions or retirements. It is the axis with the greatest articulating potential among all those that could order the uprising of a powerful union and workers’ movement throughout the country.
This is not seen or contemplated by the majority of union leaders, some for reasons of submission through their relationship of co-optation with bosses; others because, although they have not surrendered in this way, have lost over the years the praxis of struggle and the assembly methods and fraternal debate in their labor and union life spaces. Another spiral to the harmful cocktail for the working class that has facilitated the application of the government’s plan and that of their business peers, now all enlisted in the Anti-Lockout Law.
But, even so, with all its weaknesses, the axis of the salary is what has motivated the most quarrels in Venezuela being subjected to the Madurist torture. Therefore, it is logical to think that a large number of workers from all labor sectors could be grouped around this claim. This is how it becomes so important to raise a campaign for wages, with absolute clarity, precision and content.
Wages, like any other right, cannot be waived. We cannot stop claiming and even less paralyze ourselves in the face of what it has meant for our lives that we are subjected to less than a dollar a month, equivalent to a zero salary as payment (far below any parameter of extreme poverty). We are talking about a campaign to bring together the largest number of workers from all areas and regions, that we can organize ourselves guided by something as important and urgent as the rescue of the salary and the value of work.
Let us do it by discussing the campaign in our labor and class spaces, among equals, in each company, in each workplace, and place ourselves definitively in the streets with the clarity and forcefulness that we have lacked up to now, product of bureaucratic manipulation.
What do we think about this campaign?
From Marea Socialista we have been proposing the broadest unity of action around wages to various social, trade union and political factors linked to the interests of the workers. Just to cite an example, we recently held a meeting with a commission of the Popular Revolutionary Alternative (APR) to which we went to explain some first elements on how we think, from our organization, that this campaign can be designed together, in a joint way. We are waiting for an answer, and we think that time is running out.
On the other hand, within the framework of the conflict in Guayana, it can be publicly noted how our comrade Jean Mendoza, workers’ leader of the industrial lumber sector, has been intervening, although it is very positive that the workers of the basic companies are rising up, it is no less important that democratic spaces be created to discuss how to continue the development of the struggle; That the big decisions be the result of all the proposals that arise and that the axis of the wage be our unifying factor, with all its weight. It would also be necessary to qualify and know how to give it a hierarchy so that it can be effective as the main factor that massively summons the mobilization.
This is how we visualize a campaign of struggle for wages with an absolute articulating and mobilizing perspective. We think that the content of Art. 91 of the CRBV solidifies what we should demand and goes beyond what is usually so abstractly proclaimed when talking about “Decent Wages” or when asking for “Wages in Dollars”, but without specifying on what basis or what would be the reference to be considered (the cost of the basic basket of goods as expressed in the Constitution).
Beyond the currency that the employer intends to use to cancel the salary, our claim must be to comply with the cost of the basic food basket. Just for a brief reference, according to CENDA (Centro de Documentación y Análisis para los Trabajadores) the cost of the Food Basket last January was Bs.629,228,835.18. Note that this is not the same as the Basic Food Basket, which must be the real parameter for the estimation of the minimum wage which, besides including the food basket, includes other expenses such as education, health, housing, services… and which usually has a cost that doubles the first one.
There are no official figures on the cost of the basic food basket, which is obviously much higher than the food basket, because the government does not publish figures on any economic issue of public interest, since everything is handled in absolute secrecy, but the fact is that receiving a minimum wage of 1,200,000 is preventing us from living with dignity, but survive miserably instead.
To beat with the same fist raising the slogan “Salary Equal to the Basic Basket” (Art 91 of the CRBV), to hold forums on the subject, to prepare street pickets, to show it in the media we have at our disposal, to set up and take care of a profoundly class-based and independent articulation of the bosses’ Government/Opposition leaderships and to cultivate a discursive and action coherence in that sense, are essential keys to show a referential pole to the workers, of unity of action and struggle to recover the wage, which is not to work more for the exploiters and for the corrupt.
The Amparo that we introduced in 2018, at the service of that campaign.
It is clear that there is no magic or miraculous recipe to recover everything that has been taken from us. It is a unique and exclusive task of us workers. Trusting only in our forces and in our capacity is an enormous step to go recomposing ourselves as a class and as a social and political subject with the potential to transform reality. We are not saying that we see it as something linear or that it is an easy road to travel; on the contrary, we have been disintegrated and cornered, until now, of course. Even so, we know that from different fronts and with all the weaknesses we have, initiatives have been carried out that help to maintain the vindication of this fundamental right.
For this reason, in 2018 we filed before the TSJ an Amparo for Article 91 of the CRBV in the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ). That Amparo is registered under File 499-2018 and requests the protection and restitution of a sufficient and dignified salary, as well as the adjustment of the Minimum Wage in correspondence with the cost of the Basic Basket, in correspondence with the needs of the workers and with the constitutional provision violated by the government. It would be naïve on our part if we thought that the judiciary acts on its own and that it will give course to the Amparo taking into account the hard situation we are going through, but it is a point within the tactical game that we must assume in order to increase and register the greatest possible support among the workers and their different organizations.
It serves to contact and gather a record that will ultimately mean data orientated to put us in the street. It is with this perspective that we made a move at that time and we also make an enormous call to continue adding workers’ adhesions to the Amparo and that we promote the campaign that we are proposing.
From Marea Socialista we are at disposal to develop this immeasurable task. To the weaknesses that we have we can oppose the different strengths that we have as a group and showing our organization in an orderly manner. It is the best way to go in search of everyone, of those class brothers and sisters who do not see a clear reference to continue, giving the best of themselves in order to turn around this terrible historical period we are suffering.
It is possible! Let’s do it!