The Struggle for Industry to Serve the Venezuelan People
On August 27, Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez announced the end of negotiations with former owners Ternium
over the nationalisation of the Sidor steel factory, stating that the
government would “take over all the companies that it has here”,
insisting Ternium “can leave”.
Speaking during a televised broadcast, he argued that the reason behind
the decision was the fact that Ternium “did not recognise our
sovereignty”.
“The deadline for reaching an agreement has expired, we will move
ahead and pay them what it really costs, more over it will not be all
in one go as they wanted. No, we will pay them at a pace that we can
pay them.”
Until the April 9 decision to nationalise Sidor, the Ternium
consortium, whose biggest shareholder is the Italian-Argentine
transnational Techint, had 60% control of one of the largest steel
factories in Latin America, located in the industrial state of Bolivar.
Having seemingly reached an agreement on a settled price the
previous week, Chavez stated that Ternium had tried to impose
unacceptable conditions — including the passing of a law giving the
transnational immunity from any possible future lawsuits as a
consequence of abuses committed by Ternium against the Sidor workforce.
The decision to nationalise Sidor came on the back off a
15-month-long dispute between the workers and the transnational over a
collective contract.
Having intervened in order to help reach a resolution, Venezuelan
Vice-President Ramon Carrizalez declared that negotiations with Sidor’s
management were no longer possible, due to its “coloniser attitude” and
“barbarous exploitation”.
“This is a government that protects workers and will never take the
side of a transnational company”, Carrizalez insisted as he announced
the government’s decision to take Sidor over.
Nationalisation push
During the August 27 live broadcast, Chavez stood alongside
business owners from the cement industry, with whom the government has
also been in negotiation since the April 3 announcement of its
intention to nationalise the three largest cement companies that
control 90% of the sector.
While the government had reached agreements to buy out the majority
of shares from the French company, Lafarge, and the Swiss company,
Holcim, negotiations had stalled with the largest company, the
Mexican-owned Cemex.
On August 18, with the negotiation period having expired, the
government announced it was going to expropriate Cemex and ordered the
takeover of its installations.
By law, there is a 60 days period starting from the declaration of
intent to expropriate in which the two parties can reach an agreement.
While Cemex is asking for US$1.3 billion, the government has stated it
will not pay more than $650 million.
However, Chavez said that unlike the case of Ternium, there were positive signs that an agreement could be reached.
Chavez also used the broadcast to explain a new law approved in the
first round of discussion by the National Assembly that gives the state
60% control of the distribution of petrol from the state oil company,
PDVSA, to public and private service stations.
Negotiations will now begin with the seven largest companies, among
them Texaco and BP, and 650 other transport firms. The remaining 40%
will remain in the hands of cooperatives and small private owners.
Energy minister Rafael Ramirez also announced that the government
was looking at similar measures in regards to the distribution of LPG
gas cylinders.
Last month, Chavez announced plans to nationalise Spanish-owned
Banco de Venezuela, which almost doubles the state’s control of the
financial sector from its previous 10%.
Reversing neoliberalism
Together with the announcements made earlier this year to
recuperate control of over 30% of milk production and food
distribution, and last year’s decision to take majority control of the
oilfields in the Orinoco Belt, these moves are part of a second wave of
nationalisations, focused on industries related to production.
The first wave, initiated at the start of 2007, was directed at
basic services — telecommunications and electricity — to guarantee
access to all Venezuelans.
According the August 25 El Universal, since the beginning of last year 11 industries have passed over into state hands.
While pro-capitalist governments privatised a number of important
industries during the 1990s (including Sidor, part of the electrical
sector and telecommunications company CANTV), they always had their
eyes set on the big prize — PDVSA.
However, Chavez’;s election in 1998 halted such privatisation plans.
Since then the government, backed by the majority of the population, has worked towards rolling back neoliberalism.
Unsurprisingly, the first major showdown was a result of government
attempts to gain full control over the nominally state-owned PDVSA.
Fierce resistance by the parasitic capitalist class, accustomed to
leeching off the rent produced by PDVSA, led to a military coup that
briefly overthrew Chavez in April 2002 and a shutdown of the oil
industry by the pro-capitalist management in December 2002.
Both attempts by the capitalist class to bring down Chavez were
carried out in alliance with the corrupt trade union bureaucracy of the
Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV).
During more than two months of intense struggle caused by the
shutdown, oil workers alongside the poor communities and the armed
forces, reopened PDVSA and restarted it under workers’ control.
This victory was crucial in ensuring that the government could
begin to redirect PDVSA’s profits away from the capitalists and towards
funding the social missions that provide, among other things, free
health care and education. The missions also helped organise the
Chavista grassroots.
Publicly declaring in January 2005 that he had become convinced
that his project for national liberation and the eradication of poverty
could not be achieved within the bounds of capitalism, Chavez argued
for the need to move towards a “new socialism of the 21st century”.
That same month, he announced the nationalisation of the Venepal
paper factory, whose workers had been fighting to reopen it after the
boss shutdown operations during the December 2002 lockout.
Renamed Invepal, the factory was handed over to the workers as a
joint state-worker cooperative. Since then, a number of other smaller
factories that had been shut down and then taken-over by their workers
have been nationalised.
However, the nationalisations initiated in 2007 marked a
qualitative leap in the process of state recuperation of control over
strategic sectors.
State planning
These nationalisations have been carried out in accordance with the
government’s overall economic plan, which seeks state control over
strategic industries in order to direct production towards the needs of
the Venezuelan nation.
Now under state control, the three cement companies will be merged
into the new National Cement Corporation and will integrate its
production plans with PDVSA and Sidor — focusing on infrastructure
development, creating new industrial centres and push forwarding the
government’s badly needed housing construction plans.
Also being created is the Steel Corporation of Venezuela, which
will manage the whole steel production chain that is now 80% under
state control — from primary material to finished products. Production
will be directed towards the construction of small and medium
companies, the oil industry and housing sector.
And while no specific public statements have been made, it would
seem likely that with the nationalisation of Banco de Venezuela, the
public banking sector will be reorganised into one single national
public bank.
The new Public Administration Law, decreed on July 29 as part of
the package of 26 laws issued by Chavez, states that where various
state companies exist they should be grouped into one. This can include
companies in different industrial sectors that, due to their nature,
work together.
With the recent nationalisations, the number of workers in the
state sector will increase by 41,400, reaching just over 2 million
according to the National Institute of Statistics. This does not
include those in the fuel distribution and LPG cylinder distribution
sectors, which are slated to come under state control.
This represents a 53.5% increase in the number of public sector
workers in the last nine years. Importantly, Chavez has raised the need
to eradicate the practice of contracting out labour in the state
sector, which will further increase this number.
In the same period, employment in the (formal and informal) private sector grew from 7.3 million to 9.4 million.
Worker and community participation
Almost none of the recent nationalisations can be attributed
directly to workers’ struggle in favour of such measures, although in
many cases labour disputes existed. This was the case with fuel
distribution, where unions have been warning that the bosses were
trying to manufacture shortages and provoke strikes to undermine the
government.
While most of the earlier nationalisations involving small
factories did, only in Sidor can it be said that the demand for
nationalisation came from the workers.
Even then, the demand was raised only in the last period of the
struggle after persistent campaigning by a small nucleus of Sidor
workers.
Yet, the future of the nationalised companies depends on the
political and organisational capacity of the working class in the
running these industries — and the working class currently finds itself
in a state of dispersion and fragmentation.
Unofficially, according to an April 27 Ultimas Noticias, no less than 3600 unions exist in Venezuela.
This dispersion is due to numerous factors, but two in particular
stand out. Firstly, with the coming to power of Chavez, and the
expansion of workers’ rights and union freedom, workplaces across the
country experienced an explosion of union organising.
In the aftermath of the defeat of the bosses lockout, a majority of
the pro-revolution unions came behind the formation of the National
Union of Workers (UNT), which rapidly overtook the CTV as the main
union confederation.
However, the UNT is plagued by bitter internal disputes. This
division has been deepened with the decision earlier this year by two
union currents to leave the UNT and form a new union confederation.
Added to this are negative experiences in the some of the
cooperative-run factories — such as exploiting contract labour and
enriching themselves.
Secondly, actions by sections of the government and state
bureaucracy have also worked against the self-organisation of workers
and their participation in running state industries.
Under the previous labour minister, Jose Ramon Rivero (who actively
worked against the Sidor workers), parallel unionism was promoted in
order to favour the union current from which he came and aimed to
dampen down labour disputes.
In PDVSA and the state electrical company, workers have faced
attacks at the hands of the bureaucracy afraid of losing power if
workers take on a greater role in management.
Importantly, the recent nationalisations have come alongside the
launch of the April 13 social mission, which is aimed at increasing
popular power.
Chavez has stated that part the mission’s aim is to transfer
control over services to organised communities, in the form of communal
councils and communes, and the creation of productive units and
factories that will be socially owned and run.
Without the participation of workers and the organised communities
in the running of industries and in democratic planning, control of
state companies end up being left in the hands of bureaucrats who are
more interested in maintaining their share of power and privileges.
Moreover, they restrict the ability of workers to be able to fully
develop their creative potential, instead boxing them into their role
as simple providers of labour power.
This has created situations such as exists with the nationalised
Inveval valve factory, run under workers’ management, which has the
capacity to produce valves for PDVSA.
However, Inveval has been pushed aside by PDVSA bureaucrats who prefer maintaining contracts with private companies.
Significantly, it was reported on August 28 that Inveval would now
become a mixed company, jointly owned by PDVSA, and would directly
supply the state oil company with valves
In the electrical sector, despite repeated warnings by the workers,
a crisis threatens the industry as power generation and distribution
plans have failed to take into consideration increased demand caused by
the boom in industrial and housing projects.
Speaking on the eve of this year’s May Day demonstrations, Chavez
once again repeated his call for the working class to take the lead in
the struggle for socialism. “There is no revolution without the
workers, and I would add, there is no socialism without the working
class”, he insisted.
“That is why the working class that the revolution needs has to be very conscious, very united”, he said.
“The Bolivarian revolution … needs to be ‘proletarianised’ … the
ideology of the proletariat should dominate in all spheres, a
transformational, truly revolutionary ideology, and overcome petty
bourgeois currents that always end up being … counter-revolutionary.”
From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #765 3 September 2008.