Venezuela: The nationalisation of Banco de Venezuela (tags)
Bolivarian Revolution
Chavez Nationalizes Bank of Venezuela (tags)
In a television programme broadcasted to the whole of the country on July 31st, President Chávez announced the nationalisation of Banco de Venezuela, the Venezuelan bank owned by the Spanish banking multinational Grupo Santander. "We are going to nationalize Banco de Venezuela. I make an appeal to Grupo Santander to come here so that we can start to negotiate". He added: "Months ago I received the information through intelligence sources that Banco de Venezuela, which had been privatized for years, was being sold by its Spanish owners; that an agreement had been signed between Grupo Santander and a Venezuelan private banker, then the Venezuelan banker needed the permission of the government to buy a bank, this is not a small operation (...) and then I sent a message to the Spanish and the Venezuelan banker, to tell them that the government wanted to buy the bank, we want to recover it. Then the owners said ‘no, we don't want to sell it'. So now I say ‘no, I will buy it, how much is it? We are going to pay for it, and we are going to nationalize Banco de Venezuela'." The President continued: "From this moment the media campaign on the part of the Spanish and international media is going to start. They are going to say that Chávez is an autocrat, that Chávez is a tyrant, I don't care, we are going to nationalize the bank regardless". "Ladran, luego cabalgamos" (the dogs bark, therefore the caravan is moving), he said, quoting from el Quijote.
Chavez re-nationalises SIDOR – historic victory for the workers (tags)
At 1.22am Venezuelan time on Wednesday, April 9th, Venezuelan vice-president Ramon Carrizalez announced the decision of president Chávez to renationalise the giant steel plant SIDOR located in the southern state of Bolivar. The decision was taken as the Argentinean-Italian multinational group Techint (the majority shareholder of SIDOR) refused to make concessions to the workers in the collective bargaining agreement. The workers of SIDOR have been struggling for more than 15 months fighting for improvements in wages, conditions and health and safety in the collective bargaining agreement. The main points of contention were: 1) wage increase, where the company offered very little and wanted to spread any increase over a 30-month period; 2) the question of subcontracting, where the workers were demanding that all subcontracted workers (9,000 out of a total workforce of 15,000) should be incorporated into the main workforce, and 3) that there should be a substantial increase in the pensions of retired workers who were receiving less than the minimum wage.
Venezuela: The struggle for nationalisation continutes (tags)
Sanitarios Maracay
The Nationalisation of VENEPAL: What does it signify? (tags)
Hands Off Venezuela Campaign