The National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) has expanded its core duties into supporting the State’s repression apparatus by monitoring what Venezuelans say on social media, among other things. But as CONATEL tries to do too much at once, its workers are feeling the strain. On Wednesday, CONATEL employees organized an impromptu protest right in front of the agency’s main offices to…
A few years ago I was invited to write the first OpEd piece of my life by the Venezuelan newspaper El Globo. I was in graduate school at the time, immersed in trying to understand economics, and so I wrote a little piece reflecting what seemed to me a self-evident truth: that industrial policies are the pits.…
“It used to be simple,” my friend Armando is telling me. “I used to be able to play around with the shifts depending on the changes in demand. Sometimes, when I had the pizzeria, there were two good days followed by three bad days. Knowing those were coming, I could ask my guys to either…
Isolation has become the keyword in Venezuela: the heavy debt owed by the government to foreign companies, from airlines to credit card companies and any number of service providers are causing serious problems to both the country’s economy and its reputation. The telecom sector is no different, as national postal service Ipostel has put on hold all…
After four years without a salary increase, the workers of the Foreign Affairs Ministry (MPPRE) said “enough!” this week and staged a loud protest outside the Ministry’s Administrative Building in Caracas. What was the response from the higher ranks? Here’s a video of Human Resources Director Yajumari González, who descended from her office to give…
All kinds of very strange stories have been circulating about the situation in the SOE-Hearland of Ciudad Guayana, where a SIDOR strike that’s about to enter its third week is being joined by restive Ferrominera workers, amid an industrial relations climate that seems to be hitting an all-time low. Andres Velásquez’s twitter TL suggests the…
Reading this story about how close we are to a collapse in our ports, about how there are 434 thousand tons of food waiting to be unloaded, about how there aren’t enough trucks to haul all this stuff around, and about how dock workers are going to be asked to work on Sundays, makes me…
In the last few days, mutiple press reports indicate that some public sector workers have been fired and others have suffered harassment because of their political stance after the presidential election. Audio clips of several heads of public bodies (like the Zulia Sports Director or the Director of Bolipuertos in Puerto Cabello) have been leaked…
José Torres, head of the Valencia Subway workers’ union (seen on the photograph) died yesterday of his injuries after been shot outside of his house two weeks ago. Two weeks before his shooting, he publicly denounced the slow pace of progress on the Subway, due to insufficient personnel to finish the long-delayed project on time.…
The case of ice cream maker EFE is not unique. Since the new Labor Law (LOTTT) was approved last year, labor absenteeism in Venezuela has increased alarmingly. A report in El Nacional shows that some companies are facing 46% of workers’ absenteeism. A recent survey of business leaders find 44% say labor absenteeism has worsened since…
Right now, public transportation buses in Barquisimeto (called the rutas) has the words hora 0 (zero hour) written in all their side windows. Those words indicate the possibility of a strike. The reasons behind it vary: from the lack of payment of subsidies related to the “student ticket” (used by both school pupils and college…
The upcoming paquetazo could be coming in more ways than one. After the Chavernment’s Finance Minister hinted at the possibility of future tax hikes, the National Assembly is now saying it could take a look at how to reduce the large payroll of our public sector. Funny that, during the campaign, Chavismo mocked Henrique Capriles’ pledge of…
The good news is that raising hell at that cadena in Caruachi a few weeks back paid off: talks on a collective bargaining agreement have finally been launched – 28 months behind schedule. The bad news is that the rank-and-file is being kept in the dark by a union leadership that seems awfully close to…
So, with this forthright, very explicit statement refusing to countenance working under a Capriles administration, aren’t PDVSA’s chavista unions in Zulia basically threatening a paro petrolero!? ¡Ni un paso atrás, no joda! It’s worth bearing in mind, though, as a reader notes, that …this “frente” has the nominal participation of only half of PDVSA employees,…
After Ferrominera’s internal election, the situation inside Guayana’s empresas básicas is getting more intense by the day. Steel-maker SIDOR is undergoing big change. Rafael Gil Barrios, current president of the CVG state conglomerate is the new head of SIDOR, on a “temporary” basis. Gil Barrios is also the regional VP of the governing PSUV and a close ally…
