Pedro Eusse – General Secretary of the CUTV – On International Workers’ Day, the government of Nicolás Maduro gave several “gifts” to the Venezuelan working class. The salaried workers and pensioners who were trying to start a protest rally in Plaza de Venezuela, Caracas, were given a beating by a group of violent motorized vehicles while a police siege was also deployed so that they could not march at all. The message was clear: “the streets belong to the government; not to the workers”.
But the “presidential generosity” did not stop there. Nicolás Maduro did not increase the minimum wage, ratifying for the second consecutive year that under his mandate there will be no living wages, but rather bonuses with no impact on social benefits, vacations, year-end calculations, salary tables, overtime, night bonuses, etc. In other words, the minimum wage continues to be 130 bolivars ($3.55 at the time of writing). Collective bargaining agreements remain frozen and absolutely deteriorated, impacted by the destruction of the salary; the application of memorandum-circular 2792 (2018) and, in addition ─for the public sector─ by the nefarious Instruction of the National Budget Office (2022).
The process of dismantling labor rights -and particularly the salary─ has not stopped since Nicolás Maduro arrived to the presidency of the Republic. He and his team -some of them today imprisoned for corruption- have known how to do it, even before the effects of the imperialist coercive measures began. The numbers speak for themselves: in 2009, during the government of Hugo Chávez, the minimum wage was $169.73 (plus the food bonus of $106.14). Already in 2015 (Maduro’s government), the salary had been reduced to $10.59 (and the food bonus to $7.40). By 2017 the salary reached $1.57 and the food voucher $4.86 (representing 75% of the total income). And so we reached 2022, with the last increase to $7.00, which has dropped to today’s derisory amount ($3.55).
On May 1, 2024, only the so-called “economic war bonus” was increased for active workers in the public sector from $60 to $90. This bonus, together with the food bonus, adds up to $130 per month, but none of them has a salary character; that is to say, with the fraudulent figure of the “integral minimum income”, only 2.6% of what is paid per month is considered a salary for all purposes.
On the other hand, private sector workers do not receive the “economic war bonus”. Private employers are only legally obliged to pay a minimum wage of $3.55, plus a food voucher of $40, while the salary nature of additional payments is not usually recognized. In such a way, thanks to the government, employers can save the indemnities of law calculated by the salary; forcing workers ─in precarious conditions and without guarantees─ to fight administratively and judicially for the recognition of the salary character of the remuneration earned on a regular and permanent basis.
In the case of public administration retirees, they only receive $91 per month for the “economic war bonus” and do not receive a food bonus. Meanwhile, Social Security retirees continue to receive a “pension” of 130 Bs. plus a fraction of the “economic war bonus” equivalent to $32.50 per month.
In short, the Government of Nicolás Maduro is determined not to comply with Article 91 of the Constitution which obliges it to increase the minimum living wage every year and to use the basic food basket as a reference for the increase. Furthermore, with the fraudulent “integral minimum income”, the Organic Law of Labor and Workers (Lottt) is blatantly disregarded, particularly article 104 which defines the salary and its attributes. The neoliberal adjustment, with its labor deregulation, only serves the capitalists and the corrupt bureaucrats who administer the bourgeois state.
The anti-worker government of Maduro has declared economic war on the working class. We must respond to it with the powerful tactic of the broad unity of action of all active workers, retirees and pensioners, without exception. The organizations of the class-conscious labor and trade union movement raised on May Day the necessary and legal demand “For salaries and pensions equal to the basic basket of goods!” This should be the unifying and mobilizing slogan of the entire Venezuelan workers’ movement. Lowering it and putting a ceiling on it contributes to the surrender of the class to the offensive of capital.
Tribuna Popular 