Federico Fuentes, Caracas
Some 500 residents of the township of Cumanacoa, in the state of Sucre — mostly workers and cooperative members directly or indirectly employed by the local sugar processing plant, Central Azucarero Cumanacoa — turned out on September 23 to hear the news that the Venezuelan parliament would be expropriating the plant on September 26.
Present at the assembly was Jose Gregorio Villaroel, the north-east regional coordinator of the labour ministry. After the event, he explained to Green Left Weekly: "In this case, the expropriation will be carried out to benefit the 172 workers, 533 [sugar-cane] producers and more than 3230 workers on sugar plantations. If we multiply that by five members in each family we are talking about the whole municipality that is going to benefit from this."
Since early September, the Venezuelan government of socialist President Hugo Chavez has moved to expropriate a number of factories, the owners of which had closed them down and which were deemed by the government to be strategic to the Venezuelan economy and the welfare of its people, particularly with regard to what has been termed "food sovereignty" — the ability of the country to be self-sufficient in food production.
This was the case with the Central Azucarero Cumanacoa. Opened in 1954, the plant reached a peak production of 320,000 tonnes of sugar in 1975, generating 3075 direct jobs and 18,400 indirect jobs. With its privatisation in 1992, however, production dropped to 54,000 tonnes in 2004 (the same level of output it had 50 years earlier when it first opened).
Former employees told GLW that before the owners closed the plant many of them had been paid the wages owing to them in sugar, which they then had to sell in order to recuperate the money.
"This is the heart of the economy", said Rafael Emilio Barrios, mayor of the municipality of Montes, in which Cumanacoa is located. "Putting it in the hands of the people will be the biggest guarantee that it will have a positive effect for the community."
The Montes municipal council has supported the workers' struggle, initiating the legal proceedings in the federal parliament for the adoption of a resolution for the plant's expropriation.
"With articles 299 and 115 of the constitution, it is possible to expropriate for the cause of public utility", said Villaroel. "What does that mean? We go through a legal process and it is declared of public utility. It is not that the property right is not recognised, but the state assumes the payment for that property, which is what is going to be done with this sugar plant."
Buy-outs
In some cases — like that of the recent takeover of the Heinz tomato processing plant in the state of Monagas — the owners are willing to negotiate before expropriation proceedings are completed. Having offered the plant, which had been shutdown for a number of years, to the government for the sum of US$600,000, the two came to an agreement that the government would purchase it for $260,000.
"Once the expropriation is declared, we negotiate", said Villaroel. "We say, 'Look Mr, the state values this property at so much, but from this we will discount the debts you have to the workers' entitlements, the debts you have with Venezuelan banks and so on. All this was a mafia because they would receive benefits from the state, but they never gave anything to the population."
The government expropriated Central Azucarero Cumanacoa, with compensation paid to the owner, and will enter into a process of co-management with those directly and indirectly employed at the plant. Two cooperatives, one consisting of the 172 former employees and another with the 533 sugar-cane farmers, will be involved in the running of the plant.
Luis Sanchez, the vice president of the farmers' cooperative, explained to GLW that the aim was to integrate the two cooperatives, as well as help to organise the workers on the sugar plantations and the truck drivers into cooperatives.
The idea of co-management, self-management and cooperatives, of the participation of the workers in the running of their workplaces, is part of the Chavez government's promotion of an alternative economy based on solidarity and humanist principles. The idea is that alongside of, but in some cases working with, the private sector the government will promote new forms of production based on the democratisation of workplaces to replace the still dominant capitalist economy.
For Villaroel, this is part of changing the "perverse dynamic of the capitalist economy". He said: "Here, what we are trying to bring in is horizontality, where the workers are the collective owners of their companies."
The government has encouraged the small- and medium-sized private businesses to involve themselves in the process of co-management, offering credits and loans for businesses that are in financial trouble in return for the managers involving the workers in the running of the business, something that a number of firms have already taken up.
In an interview in the September 30 Caracas Temas daily, Minister for Popular Economy Elias Jaua explained the government's view on this issue: "We have policies directed towards this sector, the small and medium-size industries. We are developing policies of financing through this ministry. We are working together in experiences of co-management."
Jaua went on to explain that at this stage, the capitalist economy and the alternative economy "are not mutually exclusive, but the development of this historical process makes it incompatible with the [big-business] oligarchy and monopolies that are an essential part of the capitalist model ...
"The national private sector can understand the process and incorporate itself into the new dynamic of society or it will be simply displaced by the new productive forces which have a better quality production, a vision based much more on solidarity than consumption."
Company for social production
On the 40-minute trip to the Cumana, state capital of Sucre, I stopped at Cacao Sucre, an expropriated sugar mill that the workers received a loan from the government to purchase and run as a cooperative. The factory had been closed for eight years by its private owners, leaving 120 workers out on the street. The state governor put a call out for the workers to form themselves into a cooperative and receive the necessary training in Mission Vuelvan Caras so that they could come back to work, and also take over the running of the factory.
The 94 workers now employed at the sugar processing plant Cacao Sucre have integrated their cooperative with the 3665-strong sugar-cane farmers' cooperative. The food hall at the factory is run by a cooperative of 18 women, graduates from Mission Vuelvan Caras.
At the formal handing over of the factory to the workers in July, Chavez declared that Cacao Sucre would be the first "company for social production" (EPS). He explained that these EPS would be aimed at "the production of goods and services to satisfy the needs of the community, but at the same time they would assume a social responsibility with the community".
To facilitate this, the EPS would set a portion of their profits into a fund to help pay for health, education and other projects of benefit to the local community. Chavez said that it was necessary that all the public sector companies be transformed into EPS.
For these projects to be truly successful, Villaroel said, "there needs to be a change in the mentality of the workers". Marcela Maspero, one of the national coordinators of the UNT labour federation agreed, commenting to GLW: "Our biggest preoccupation with this process of co-management ... is that we make sure not to run the risk of converting our comrades into another neoliberal capitalist and we are able to see beyond that towards the necessity of the community, how we use this to benefit those who have been excluded, who aren't employed, how we go about creating a whole new socialist culture surrounding property and the generation of benefits."
Villaroel told GLW that the EPS were aimed at breaking "with the capitalist economy, which promotes greed, individualism, the lack of solidarity ... It is impossible to explain how a sugar plant can exist here and belts of misery exist next to it. But the company never invested, never assumed its social responsibility. The workers at the sugar plant have to assume this responsibility. They have to attend to the problems of malnutrition, they have to open up the food hall and put it to function not just for the workers but for the people who don't have the resources, extend their hand to Mission Barrio Adentro, the Cuban doctors ...
"This is part of a company which has a social function, not like the monster that we see stealing from the workers their labour power and their surplus value."
From Green Left Weekly, October 26, 2005.
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