On 14 March, Venezuelan police — the “Bolivarian National Guard” — attacked a demonstration of striking steel workers from Latin America’s biggest steel works, the SIDOR factory in Ciudad Guayana, arresting more than fifty workers and injuring dozens.

SIDOR’s 13,000 workers have been on strike repeatedly over the last year and a half, demanding a new collective contract including wage increases and better working conditions. SIDOR was privatised in 1998 and belongs 60% to the Argentinian consortium Techint; since privatisation conditions have deteriorated severely, with many workers dying on the job. (The most recent, on 25 March, died of a heart attack on a station previously run by three workers, sparking a three day strike.)

The workers’ union SUTISS is demanding not only new contracts but renationalisation of their factory — a demand which the Chavez government and its self-styled “Trotskyist” minister of labour Jose Ramon Rivero have resisted, eager to avoid confrontation with its Argentinian ally. Naturally, the government has done nothing to condemn the 14 March repression.

Victimised oil company militant and UNT union coordinator Orlando Chirino has commented: “If the SIDOR workers win, this anti-worker Labour Minister will fall in a few minutes. If the SIDOR workers win the workers in the public sector will win their struggle. If the SIDOR workers win, the fight for trade union autonomy will win.”

A solidarity committee has been formed, demanding that Chavez speaks out against the repression, and messages of support have been streaming in from across Venezuela and beyond.