Salvador De León is a member of the Autonomous and Independent Workers’ Committee (CAIT) in Venezuela. In the second of our two-part interview, Green Left’s Federico Fuentes speaks to De León about the situation facing Venezuelan workers and trade unions. Read part one here.
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Could you describe the economic situation facing Venezuelan workers?
There has been a tremendous decline in workers’ wages in terms of their value and purchasing power.
This crisis has been worsened by the collapse of the entire social welfare system. Healthcare, education, everything allowing workers to enjoy greater dignity is in tatters.
The loss of wages is most keenly felt, but workers suffer the consequences of a dismantled social welfare system, which has left the population impoverished.
To understand how we got here, we have to go back to the period before the waves of crises began to hit in 2014.
In the 2000s, China’s huge industrialisation program led to a rise in raw material prices, which benefitted Latin American countries.
This coincided with the election of progressive governments in Latin America — Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Lula da Silva in Brazil, Nestor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, etc — and allowed them to redistribute wealth, to a greater or lesser extent.
In Venezuela, there was a constitutional process in 1999 that laid the groundwork for further democratic and economic gains.
But after significant progress in redistributing wealth and expanding democracy, the commodity market collapsed and oil prices plummeted.
Venezuela still has an unsustainable rentier economy given fundamental measures, such as nationalising the banks, were never taken.
As part of a globalised capitalist economy in crisis, Venezuela was affected. Since then, crises have hit in waves, but it began with collapsing commodity prices.
During that time, the political will was not there to implement measures needed to deepen and sustain the revolutionary process.
There is also a crisis in the trade union movement and the fact that the capitalist class has achieved its objectives.
We got to where we are today because the government accepted its role of a Bonapartist regime [balancing off the major classes].
Today, like everywhere in the world, the government provides capitalists with all their needs and guarantees, while Venezuelan workers bear the brunt of the economic crisis.
Has the state at least enforced workers’ rights at the same time?
I will answer by giving you an example: Venezuelan law provides workers with job security; no worker can be fired [without prior approval from the Ministry of Labour’s Labour Inspectorate].
But workers do not trust state institutions, as the profound institutional crisis we face means Venezuelans no longer trust their institutions. So, workers simply do not go to the Ministry of Labour if they are fired.
Before this, when large companies laid off workers and the Ministry of Labour sought to intervene, the companies simply defied it.
This was a tactic used by big business: Grupo Polar, Coca-Cola, Regional, Pepsi-Cola, Cargill. Some managers were jailed for a few days, but they had the economic power to deal with the fallout.
So, we need to look at the sequence of events that led us to this point. [The big business federation] Fedecámaras stuck to its traditional strategy and managed to pierce the nation-state by simply refusing to obey the law. At the same time the state refused to go further.
At one point there was growing talk of workers' control, of expropriating businesses that were waging economic war — all this was debated in the grassroots and even inside the state.
But the government opted to avoid further confrontations, arguing that imperialism would suffocate us and leave us worse off.
The next step was the Economic Recovery Program [adopted in 2018] where, again, it was argued that deeper and more radical steps were ill-advised, and instead we needed to be more inclusive towards the business community.
This demagogic rhetoric left us where we are today.
Fedecámaras sees its policies and proposals being heard while continuing to do whatever they want. Today, capitalists have a greater capacity than workers to be heard, and greater political participation.
How has the union movement responded? What is the current state of the movement?
Venezuela’s trade union movement has been in crisis since before [former president Hugo] Chávez.
The broader political crisis that erupted after the 1989 Caracazo uprising had its reflection in the union movement.
One pillar of the old two-party system was the tripartite social dialogue between the government, Fedecámaras and the CTV (Confederation of Workers of Venezuela).
The CTV was the most important union confederation and both main parties, Democratic Action and COPEI, were active in it.
When the two-party system collapsed, so did the CTV. This is part of the history of the crisis we face today.
There is also the fact that since the 1999 Constitution was adopted, we have never had a truly unified union confederation to accompany the revolutionary process under Chávez.
Today, there are several union confederations, but they are dispersed and polarised.
There is the Socialist Bolivarian Workers’ Central, which is important because it unites federations in the large state-owned industries. But it is limited by its lack of autonomy due to being aligned with the ruling party.
Then there are union confederations that have been co-opted by opposition parties.
Political polarisation has severely hampered trade union autonomy. No trade union movement truly understands the need for autonomy and operates accordingly.
On top of that, there is a lot of parallel unionism. Moreover, mass emigration took with it many union leaders.
So, the crisis of the trade union movement is profound, serious and multifactorial.
A large number of union members and workers have been jailed for protesting. Why is this?
This issue has several aspects, especially the adoption of state of emergencies.
The basis of any state of emergency is that the integrity of a nation is at risk. This is the case in any country, for example during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Venezuela, the state bases its actions on these exceptional decrees. Its actions are illegal and illegitimate, but are based on this criterion, which arose from the attacks facing the Venezuelan state.
We know that laws and justice are interpreted differently depending on your class.
As workers, the danger is that our sovereignty is being eroded in terms of democratic gains. But the state sees it from the perspective of governability.
For example, the government considers [the state oil company] PDVSA and [the state electricity company] CORPOELEC as strategic sectors and acts on the basis of precedents, such as the oil strike [that was part of the 2002-03 coup attempt], etc.
This does not justify criminalising dissent, but we need to understand that, at one point, the opposition did try to carry out coups that ultimately empowered the state and government.
One specific example: if you look at the Law Against Organised Crime and Financing of Terrorism, or the Law against Hate, for Peaceful Coexistence and Tolerance, you can see that the state adopted these laws at the time when it confronted coup attempts by business sectors.
But these laws became a double-edged sword, because just as they could be used against a bosses’ lockout, they have been used against union leaders under the same pretext of protecting the nation’s economy.
Most charges laid against the vast majority of these workers are based on laws created at a specific moment to confront coup attempts. These workers have been charged illegitimately, illegally, and often on trumped up accusations, using these laws.