Labor

The assassination of three labour leaders belonging to the largely pro-PSUV UNT has been analyzed as the spreading of rural political violence to urbanised forms targeting labour leaders and social workers. What has not been discussed is the emotional response of leftists against such crimes.

Interview with José Quintero, member of the INVEVAL Factory Committee, by El Militante, newspaper of the Revolutionary Marxist Current (CMR). Inveval is a Venezuelan valve factory that workers took over a few years ago.

On Friday, November 21, as part of a protracted conflict, 360 workers of Vivex occupied their factory in the industrial district Los Montones in Barcelona (Anzoategui). The plant makes windscreens for the car industry, and the workers are demanding of President Chavez that he should nationalise it.

It’s time to calm down and sit down together in order to evaluate in depth with the comrades, and draw conclusions that truly reflect reality. It is necessary to open a profound debate within the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), to reflect and proceed with self-criticism, as President Chávez indicated on Sunday night.

“On November 23, we will not just be voting for this or that governorship, we will be deciding the destiny of this revolutionary process”, says Stalin Perez Borges, a national coordinator of the National Union of Workers (UNT) and United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) militant.

An interview with Carlos Lanz, one of Venezuela's main socialist intellectuals and leaders, who pioneered worker management in one of Venezuela's largest state-owned companies, the Aluminum processing plant Alcasa. He talks to Michael Albert about how the workplace of the future would be organized, among other things.

On August 27, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced the end of negotiations with former owners Ternium over the nationalisation of the Sidor steel factory, stating that the government would “take over all the companies that it has here”, insisting Ternium “can leave”.

The owner of Fundimeca, an air conditioning factory in Valencia, Carabobo, is waging an intense campaign of terror and intimidation against the factory’s work force, which is fighting to ensure that the company complies with Venezuela’s constitution and labour laws.

On June 11, President Chavez, accompanied by several of his principal ministers, met with the 500 most important employers in Venezuela. He called there for "national unity". The socialist journal Marea Socialista asked Stalin Perez Borges to evaluate this meeting in the present Venezuelan context.

A series of recent events has opened up a new phase in Venezuela's labor movement. One of the most significant was the government’s decision to re-nationalise the Sidor steel works, one of the most important in Latin America, after an 18-month struggle by its work force.