Carlos Dürich – Venezuela is currently going through one of the most convulsive stages of its republican history. One of the aspects where this is most clearly observed is in the economic field: the unilateral economic «sanctions» that the United States has sustained against the nation, added to the deficient strategies developed by the Venezuelan Government to face them, have generated severe hardships to the people and specifically to the working class, being the main sacrificed force.
According to the Observatory of Labor Conflict and Union Management of the Institute for Higher Union Studies (Inaesin), in 2023 there were more than 1,000 labor conflicts in the country; more than 85% of them were related to salary improvements. As of March 15 of this year, the so-called «integral minimum income» was at $103.50, distributed in 130 Bs. (formal salary equivalent to $3.58 at the official exchange rate), $60 corresponding to the so-called «war bonus» and $30 to the food bonus. In view of this, the increase in protests over the salary issue is understandable if we consider that the cost of the family food basket in Venezuela is around $522.
Exactly two years ago, during the II Congress of the Working Class, President Nicolás Maduro ordered the salarization of all the bonuses that until now made up the income of the workers of the Public Administration. During the event, the President admitted the deficiency of this policy and fixed the minimum salary at half a Petro ($30). However, this promise was never fulfilled and in the last two years the logic of the salary bonus has developed in a rampant manner.
Currently, the salary with which labor benefits and liabilities are calculated only represents 3.3% of the monthly income, clearly fulminating the rights and demands of the working class in an almost irreversible manner.
On this point it is worth mentioning the lack of official data indicating the number of beneficiaries of the «economic war bonus»; a payment that is granted by the State and not a contractual remuneration such as the food bonus.
By increasing bonuses compared to salaries, the percentage of income that is considered for the calculation of benefits and other labor benefits for seniority and other liabilities is reduced. In this sense, it is a regressive measure of labor against capital, decreasing the participation of labor in the use and enjoyment of socially produced wealth.
All because of imperialist «sanctions»?
The impact of the «sanctions» on our economy and therefore on workers’ wages must be recognized; as mentioned by economist Pasqualina Curcio in her article «Negative repercussions of the sanctions»: «As a consequence of the blockade to [oil firm] Pdvsa and the attack on the bolivar, Venezuelans stopped producing around $170 billion only between 2016 and 2019».
However, the economist and other specialists argue that foreign «sanctions» have been aggravated ─in the specific case of the salary─ by an inefficient and lacking policy of price control and protection of the bolivar.
Curcio, in another article, talking about the monetary policy of the Central Bank of Venezuela highlights the following: «the real wage has fallen 99% between 2013 and 2020, impacting a 50% drop in household consumption, 30% in Government spending and 88% in investment (these falls are between 2013 and 2017, we do not have the data from 2018 but they should not have improved)».
President Nicolás Maduro in his annual message before the National Assembly, on January 12, 2021, admitted that one of the challenges of the new stage of the Bolivarian process was the improvement of workers’ salaries, «which in no way adjust to the economic reality».
At that time, Maduro declared that the general effort as a country should be aimed at a single goal: «the recovery of the economy for all; in the recovery of wages and family income, in the reconstruction of the welfare state».
In addition, the head of state assured that in the realization of a living wage was the real possibility of the country’s economic recovery. Three years after that promise, the only thing that governmental and legislative policy has achieved is to reduce and worsen the formal and legal conditions of the working class, both through the legal framework (for example through the new special economic zones) and through the new mechanisms of employer relations.
Wage improvements
The improvement of salaries is today an objective of struggle. We must not lose sight of the fact that the Organic Labor Law (Lottt) establishes in its article 111 that «the National Executive may decree the salary increases and measures it deems necessary to protect the purchasing power of the workers» and that for such purpose «it will carry out wide consultations and will find out the opinions of the different social organizations and institutions in socioeconomic matters».
The current days are propitious to denounce this type of injustice; to unmask the outrages and misdeeds; to demand a greater participation in the national wealth and not to resort to the blackmail of «unity» for the sake of it.
The working class wants unity in the face of imperialism, but demands that this unity be based on class consciousness: a consciousness that promotes the struggle for social wealth and not its abandonment to large capital. The working class demands from its allies and from the so often repeated «class friends» within the government, an attitude in line with its demands.
In this sense, it is opportune to keep in mind the words of Engels: «All measures tending to limit competition, the accumulation of large capital in the hands of isolated individuals… All state organization of labor, etc., all these measures, as revolutionary measures, are not only possible, but even necessary. They are possible, because the entire insurrectionary proletariat will support and maintain them with its armed wing. They are possible – in spite of all the difficulties and inconveniences that the economists wield against them – because precisely these difficulties and inconveniences will oblige the proletariat to go further and further, up to the total liquidation of private property, in order not to lose again what has been conquered».
The struggle for a living wage is more than a struggle, it is an essential condition to sustain a model of a country; a condition for the construction (or deepening) of an authentic revolution, with democratic premises in the economic and social spheres. Chávez himself already warned when he signed the decree that gave the Lottt the rank of law, on April 30, 2012: «No conquest of the workers has occurred without a long process of resistance, of struggle, of suffering». The best tribute to the working class in these dark times is to redeem its legacy in our actions: let us all be promoters of a living wage and continue fighting for the welfare of the people.
Tribuna Popular 