The year 2023 is still shaping up as a year of great class struggles between capital and labor. And this evolution of the class struggle in Venezuela is logical, since the dramatic picture of social inequality created by the neo-liberal economic package applied by the government of Nicolás Maduro, could have no other answer than the intense protest and permanent mobilization of the workers who demand, among other socio-economic demands, decent wages and pensions indexed to the basic basket of goods.
Now, these national days of protest are mainly carried out by workers in the education, health, basic iron, aluminum, electricity, cement and hydrological industries, and to a lesser extent in the private sector; The movement of prevention delegates, as an integral part of the labor and union movement in general, does not appear on the scene, and its flags of struggle are kept low profile despite the seriousness of the current situation of occupational health and safety in Venezuela, expressed in alarming figures of accidents and morbidity in the workplace.
This notable absence is due to the state of weakness of the once powerful movement of prevention delegates, today extremely disarticulated and dispersed, with the aggravating factor of the subordination of some of its organic expressions (councils of prevention delegates) to the State institutionality, in tune with its affiliation to the governmental Central Bolivarian Socialist Workers’ Union (CBST).
Faced with this lamentable picture of weakness, the class sectors of the movement, among them the Colectivo Clasista por la Salud y Seguridad en el Trabajo «Emilio Cañizales Guédez» (CCSSTECG), we must take up the challenge of meeting, rearticulating and regrouping in the heat of the days of struggle in progress, raising a minimum program that expresses in a unitary manner the most heartfelt demands of the workers in terms of health and safety conditions at work, and in particular the demands of the prevention delegates referring to the real exercise of their rights and functions in terms of surveillance and control of the working conditions and environment.
The CCSSTECG proposes that, within the framework of the spaces of unity of action that are being developed on the occasion of the current days of protest, a meeting of sectors of the movement of prevention delegates be held, and that the minimum program on occupational health and safety be incorporated into the general demands for the rescue of the rights of the working people.
Tribuna Popular 