Venezuela
Memorias del “Poder Popular” en la economía venezolana (tags)
* En la primera parte se hace un balance de lo ocurrido en Venezuela tras al menos 7 años de pretendida construcción de una economía de producción socialista, en donde los datos disponibles y los hechos comprobables evidencian el fracaso de la gestión chavista. La segunda sección detalla lo que se oculta tras la recompra estatal de la mayoría accionaria en la principal planta siderurgica del país.
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.