Outside Miraflores they were joined by hundreds of workers from Constructora Nacional de Válvulas (CNV) valve plant, a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant, and other factories that workers have occupied for months.

The main demand of the October 1 rally here of about 500 was that the government of President Hugo Chávez either force the owners of these companies to pay workers more than 10 months of back wages and benefits they are owed, or nationalize the plants and allow workers to restart production.

Working people throughout Venezuela, as in the rest of Latin America, are facing an economic depression. The grinding impact of this crisis on workers and farmers here intensified this year as a result of a bosses’ “strike” last December and January. This employer lockout, backed by Washington, was aimed at undermining the nationalist government of Hugo Chávez. It crippled the oil industry for months—in the fifth-largest petroleum-producing country in the world—and caused temporary shortages of gasoline, natural gas, and many food items.

After February 4, when the bosses’ strike ended, the Venezuelan government fixed the exchange rate of the currency, the bolivar, at 1,600 to the U.S. dollar; imposed price controls; and took other measures to slow down capital flight. Businessmen were taking their capital out of the country, worried that their profits were in danger after this second failure by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie in less than a year to topple Chávez. The previous attempt had been a short-lived military coup in April 2002.

Since February, hundreds of factories and other enterprises have shut down.

Faced with growing unemployment and the specter of poverty, workers have taken over many plants in recent months to protect jobs and demand back pay.

According to an October 1 news item in the Caracas daily El Mundo, as many as 63 companies have been taken over by workers since the beginning of this year. Settlements between the workers and the bosses are now being reached at many of these enterprises.  
 
Fight at Industrial Perfumes
The Industrial de Perfumes plant is located on Baralt Avenue near downtown Caracas. Workers there manufacture the Cristine Carol line of cosmetics and perfumes.

“Problems began before the bosses’ ‘strike,’” said Joel Mata Lanz, in an interview in the factory cafeteria the morning of October 1. Dozens of workers had gathered there, the organizing center of the occupation, in preparation for the march to Miraflores that day. Mata Lanz is the secretary of the local of the National Union of Workers of the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industry (SUNTIQF), which organizes the 400 production workers.

“The company now owes us 17 months of unpaid benefits,” he said, including vacation pay, social security, and credit union interest payments. “For more than a year before the plant shut down, the bosses were deducting benefits from our paychecks. But it turns out they never deposited these payments in the appropriate bank account, so we can’t collect now that they have declared bankruptcy.”

During the employers’ lockout in December, said Carlos Enrique Rángel, a truck driver for Industrial de Perfumes, “the company shut down for three days, but they had to reopen because of pressure by the workers.” All workers interviewed said that none of the union members there backed the bosses’ strike.

In addition to production workers, the company employs about 600 drivers and salespeople, who were paid piece rate, for a total workforce of 1,000. “Drivers averaged 195,000 bolivars ($122) per month,” Rángel said, compared to the average monthly pay of 330,000 bolivars ($207) for factory workers. Even the production workers’ wages make it hard to make ends meet. Rent in working-class neighborhoods is a minimum of 200,000 bolivars per month and rice now costs 3,000 bolivars per kilo (1,600 bolivars equal one dollar).

The drivers did not belong to SUNTIQF and were not covered by the union contract. The union reached out to involve them in the fight, however. Dozens like Rángel have been taking part in guard duty and other assignments related to the occupation.

“On May 29 the situation got worse,” Mata Lanz continued. “That day the company called a meeting with the workers. They told us that in order for them to continue operations we would have to take a wage cut, agree to the layoff of 40 union members, accept a reduction of the workweek, and increase production. They told us we basically had to throw out the union contract and work under their terms, if we wanted a job.”

Workers overwhelmingly rejected the bosses’ proposal. The next day the owners filed for bankruptcy and announced they would shut the plant down. After a court accepted the company’s request for liquidation June 27, effective 10 days later, a union meeting was held where a large majority decided that workers should take over the plant as a last resort to pressure the company to pay them what they were due. After not getting a response from the courts or the Ministry of Labor on their demand to put the bankruptcy on hold until workers received their back pay, the union organized the takeover.  
 
Plant occupation began July 7
“On July 7, just before the bankruptcy was to take effect, dozens of us rushed the security guards in the evening and took over the factory,” said Clarissa Bezera, a production worker at the company for seven years.

A number of workers pointed out that the bosses’ liquidation request did not include many company assets, such as the 200 delivery trucks and vans. “Their bankruptcy was a fraud,” Bezera said. “Selling all these trucks alone would be more than enough to pay all their debts to us. They were simply trying to rob us.”

“This is the first conflict of this kind here,” said Carmen Rosa González, a warehouse worker with nine years at the company. “Until the end of May they had sales of more than 1 billion bolivars ($625,000) per month. They say they are in bankruptcy, but there are enough raw materials in the factory and they have many trucks, so they could pay us.”

In addition to taking over the plant, the factory workers managed, with the help of friendly company drivers, to gather up more than 100 of the delivery vehicles. They locked them up in a yard where they have been under union guard ever since, we were told.

While a good number of production workers have tried to get other jobs, more than half have remained active with the occupation. “We get a stipend from the union and donations of food and funds from other workers,” said Alexis Mejía.

“This is not an economic but a political problem,” Mejía continued. “There are enough raw materials to produce here for nearly two years. But we can’t restart production before we resolve the legal dispute with the company.” Mejía and other workers said they are worried that the army and the police, who workers have managed to keep out of the plant so far, could be easily sent in to evict them if they did so.

“Since we’ve been getting no response to our demands to get paid from either the company or the courts, we are now asking that the government nationalize the factory and allow us to run it,” Mejía said. The union recently showed videos from plant takeovers in Argentina where workers are raising the same demand, he added.

Other workers were more guarded. “If expropriation and nationalization benefit the workers,” said Carmen Rosa González, “I agree with it. If it could lead to jobs for all.”

González and other workers said that if the company came up with the benefits and severance pay the workers are owed according to labor law, they would have no option but to end the occupation.

The owners have begun to take some steps in that direction, hoping to divide the workforce and defuse the struggle at a minimal cost to them. On September 30 management notified workers that they could go to a designated bank the next day and collect a small portion of the benefits owed to them. Having gone for months without income, many workers did just that.

“This was a calculated move to minimize how many people would come out for the march to Miraflores,” Mata Lanz told workers at the cafeteria in a meeting before the demonstration. About 100 workers from the plant showed up for the march that morning, half the expected participation, we were told.

On the way to the presidential palace, workers from Industrial de Perfumes got many honks of solidarity from motorists and greetings from passersby. The rally in front of Miraflores grew to about 500 people, as workers from Constructora Nacional de Válvulas, a Pepsi-Cola plant, the Fénix textile mill in the state of Guárico, and other factories joined in.

A delegation of five unionists, including a representative of the recently formed National Union of Workers (UNT), went in to meet with government representatives. No agreement of any kind was reached that day, González said, and a second meeting with government authorities was set for October 9. Meanwhile, workers from these plants organized another protest rally in front of the National Assembly October 7.  
 
Takeover at valve plant
Constructora Nacional de Válvulas (CNV) is a plant that produces valves for the oil industry. It is located on top of a hill in a mountainous area outside Los Teques, Miranda state, about one hour southeast of Caracas. The plant used to employ 110 workers. It is owned by Andrés Sosa Pietri, a figure in the big-business association Fedecámaras that led the two-month employers’ lockout. Pietri was a former president of Petróleos de Venezuela (PdVSA), the state-owned oil monopoly. CNV workers say they have a video showing Pietri in opposition demonstrations early this year calling for civil disobedience to bring down Chávez.

When these reporters arrived at the plant on the afternoon of October 3, workers were doing a botellazo—shaking the can for donations from motorists on a street near the plant to help sustain the occupation.

“On December 9 the bosses sent us home saying we should take vacation for a month because there was no work for now,” said Juan Padilla, a member of the comité de conflicto (Conflict Committee), which organizes the plant occupation. “When we went back January 6, the plant was closed and we were sent home with no explanation.” After the bosses’ strike ended, Padilla said, “We had a meeting with management. They paid us 30 percent of wages they owed us, sent us home, and we haven’t heard from them again.”

At that meeting, “the company asked us to suspend the union contract and agree to cuts in wages and layoffs,” added William Salas, also a member of the Conflict Committee. “We didn’t agree with that. The boss was demanding that we shift onto our backs his losses from a ‘strike’ that he called and we rejected.”

After being told the plant would be shut down because sales to PdVSA were close to nil, workers found out that the bosses had organized a small crew of the better-paid workers to continue production and to finish and ship out truckloads of valves that had been started in December. “Then we decided to take over the plant,” said Salas.

About 80 workers took part in the plant takeover on may 15. The officers of their union, the Metalworkers Union, left the premises, Salas and Padilla said, once they got wind of what most workers were planning. Workers elected the Conflict Committee to replace the union structure that collapsed.

“The occupation of this factory is a defensive action,” said Salas. “We are defending our right to a job, to be able to feed our families.”

Other workers expressed similar opinions. “There is more unemployment because of the bosses,” said José Luis Garmendia, who used to work in the company warehouse. “We didn’t take over the factory because we are Chavistas. It’s a chance for most of us to fight for jobs.”

Unlike the owners of the Industrial de Perfumes plant and other factories, Pietri never tried to declare bankruptcy. He did try to evict workers in order to get the machinery and raw materials out of the premises, Padilla said. In August a local court issued an eviction order and police were dispatched to carry it out. The cops were confronted with a mobilization of hundreds of workers from other factories and nearby working-class neighborhoods that came to the defense of the CNV workers. As a result, Padilla said, the police backed off and the Conflict Committee succeeded in getting the judge to suspend the eviction order.

Since then, water and electricity have been cut off by the utility companies. The foundry where the plant obtained its raw materials, also owned by Pietri, has been shut down by the company. “So even if we wanted to, we couldn’t start production,” Padilla said.

Salas said workers are afraid the police would raid the plant to evict them by force if they try to enter the factory and get the machinery going. “We would leave if the boss paid us back wages and if we had a guarantee that he wouldn’t restart without a union contract,” he stated. “There is no anarchy here. We comply with the law.” Workers have set up tents and a commissary to organize guard duty. They have also obtained a school bus where they sleep.

Antonio Betancourt, president of the Conflict Committee, said during the October 1 demonstration at Miraflores that CNV workers adopted the demand for nationalization as their last resort. “A few weeks ago, the company shut down its offices and took down its web site,” he stated. “Asking the government to expropriate the plant is the only thing we can do.”

Betancourt, Padilla, Salas, and other workers said it’s not clear how long they can sustain the occupation. From the initial 80 workers who took over the plant, 67 remain active in the occupation. They receive no unemployment insurance. In the absence of support from the Metalworkers Union, they can only rely on donations from nearby communities to survive.  
 
Settlements reached in many conflicts
Under these conditions, workers have reached settlements with the bosses in many plants occupied under similar circumstances.

In some cases, workers seem to have made some gains. At the Pepsi-Cola plant in Villa de Cura, Aragua state, 350 workers took over the bottling facility for two months after the company demanded deep concessions from the union as a condition to continue operations. After workers threatened to shut down the other two Pepsi plants in the country and the company’s entire distribution operation, the bosses agreed to rehire the entire workforce and reopen the plant in November as long as the union dropped the demand for nationalization.

“We had to do that,” said Luis Hernández, who works in that plant and had come to the Miraflores action along with a few dozen of his coworkers to show solidarity with the other embattled workers. “The time is not ripe to demand nationalization of industry.”

In other companies workers have agreed to concessions to get part of the operation going again. Venepal, the largest paper company in Venezuela, used to employ 6,000 workers. Since late last year the company has been shut down. In the spring hundreds of workers occupied the Venepal complex near Morón, in Carabobo state. The union joined with others to pressure the government to nationalize the company.

Hundreds of these workers were scheduled to come to Miraflores for the October 1 rally. In a meeting between the company, the bank financing Venepal, and union officials at the end of September, however, an agreement was reached to end the occupation. According to Arvilio Vidalgo, a union representative at Venepal, the bankers proposed to “capitalize” the company’s debt, meaning the bank will become Venepal’s principle shareholder, while the union agreed to drop the demands for nationalization and for getting workers’ back pay. Production restarted at this plant the first week of October with a small portion of the workforce, about 400 workers, with additional hiring down the road “as sales improve,” Vidalgo said.

Vidalgo said that steep unemployment, inflation, and other bad economic conditions were a factor in reaching this decision at Venepal.

Joblessness in Venezuela, according to official statistics, now exceeds 18 percent. Imports declined by 51 percent between January and July of this year. Inflation has dropped slightly since last year, but is still hovering at 21 percent. And the country’s gross domestic product is expected to decline by 10 or 11 percent by the end of 2003.

It appears that under the grinding impact of the economic crisis and in the absence of class-struggle leadership in the labor movement, the earlier momentum toward plant takeovers by workers is winding down for now.

Despite this, many workers are showing their determination to resist and are linking their struggles for economic demands to the broader fight to prevent the Venezuelan bourgeoisie from toppling the Chávez government.

As Carmen Rosa González put it, “We don’t know if we’ll win this battle” at Industrial de Perfumes. “Here, most of us support the president. But the war is not about Chávez. It’s a war against the workers, against the poor. The wealthy have been accustomed to get their way all the time. Now it’s not quite that way. We’ll stick it out.”
 
 
Related articles:
Venezuela: gov’t communications building is target of grenade attack
Big-business media promotes actions against Chávez  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home