Fired Venezuelan Labor Leader Orlando Chirino Reinstated in Job
November 19, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)— Venezuela’s Labor Ministry ruled this Tuesday that the labor leader Oscar Chirino was illegally fired from his job in the state owned oil company PDVSA and must be reinstated. The ruling comes about one year after his being fired under unclear circumstances, but which Chirino says was for his activism as a critical labor leader in the pro-Chávez union federation National Union of Venezuelan Workers (UNT).
Chirino is part of the Classist, Unitary, Revolutionary, and Autonomous Current (C-CURA) of the UNT, which has often been critical of the Chávez government, despite its general support for Chávez. Also, he is a leader of Sinutrapetrol, one of the main oil worker unions of PDVSA.
The first thing he would do, Chirino said, was to ask an official of the Labor Ministry to accompany him to PDVSA, to make sure the he is properly reinstated.
According to Chirino, his reinstatement was thanks to Venezuela’s union movement and of international union members who sent a petition of 5,000 signatures to PDVSA and to the Labor Ministry in his support and against the “arbitrary” and “illegal” firing that was a result of “political retaliation.”
Chirino’s case also received international attention when it was highlighted in a recent Human Rights Watch report on Venezuela. Chirino rejected the report’s use of his case, though, saying that it was imperialist opportunism that Human Rights Watch would use his case, even if his firing was unjustified and illegal.
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