Workers’ protests emerge in Venezuela

A thousand people marched through Caracas on Saturday 14 March, and broke through a police cordon to reach the National Assembly building before delivering a list of demands. The protest was spearheaded by education unions and public sector unions, which may explain the government’s response of increasing the “economic war bonus” in public sector jobs by a quarter.

Current world oil markets are not easy to predict, nor do they instil confidence in investors. But before Trump’s current war on Iran began, oil money had definitely started pouring in to Venezuela. The government are using new proposed labour laws to try and ensure that this money stays in the hands of the government and the ruling class.

A useful article by Oswaldo Pacheco from the Venezuelan union C-Cura, published on the Venezuelan Voices website, states that while the oil sector projects 20% growth in 2026, the government is trying to keep the proceeds out of workers’ pockets. “What Roig [a representative of the Fedecámaras business association at the ILO] is proposing specifically is an Emergency Labour Law that would allow bonuses to be paid outside of wages without impacting benefits, vacations, or seniority, and then discuss the substance of the matter. In other words: a nominal wage increase today in exchange for handing over the accumulated future wealth of workers.”

Bonuses

This is part of a much broader practice in Venezuela, where “bonuses” have come to replace standard wages in order for employers to sidestep expenses like benefits, vacations or security. According to Pacheco, 96% of workers’ income in modern-day Venezuela is from bonuses.

A 2012 law enacted under Hugo Chavez ensured maternity leave, prohibited unfair dismissal and outsourcing, and extended pensions to all workers. Current proposals would gut this law of its content.

In this context, it is promising that Venezuelan unions have begun mobilising against the new labour laws, and calling positively for the raising of the minimum wage, in part to curtail the practice of wages all being paid through off-the-books “bonuses”. The original minimum wage was set in March 2022, but inflation and sanctions on Venezuela have meant the money amount (130 bolívars) has devalued from around $30 to around $0.30 (per month). Thus the explosion in “bonuses” to replace baseline wages.

Workers in Venezuela face an uphill battle against not one, but two enemies: their own capitulating (but still military-authoritarian) government, and the Trump administration. International economic, military and political circumstances are not favourable. But the action being taken in these conditions against their government for better conditions and real wages are the first shoots of a movement for real change in Venezuelan society. It is these movements that socialists in the UK and elsewhere should look to and support.

Otherwise? Venezuela has been spared any further direct military intervention by the Trump administration, and there’s been some boost in income for Venezuelan capitalists. Thus ends the good news.

Abduction

Since the abduction of Nicolas Maduro at the start of the year, the political turmoil in the country has led to less political change than one might have expected. In previous articles in Solidarity we have noted President Delcy Rodriguez’s “tightrope”: clinging on to the acquiescence of the population (and the military hierarchy) and giving vent to anger over Maduro’s capture, while playing nicely with the US in order to prevent any further intervention or disorder.

That two-faced approach has now clearly tilted in one direction: Rodriguez speaks like a Madurista, but acts like a Trumpist. The streets of Caracas may still be filled with government-endorsed posters calling for the release of Maduro, and the occasional government-backed demonstration; but the government itself is bending over backwards to meet every demand of the Americans, and restructuring the economy in the interests of American capital.

Any hint of demanding that Trump release Maduro and his wife, who are still facing charges in New York, has disappeared from Venezuela’s direct engagement with the US government directly.

As of 6 March, Rodriguez has normalised relations and resumed diplomatic engagements with the US. Presumably as part of the same process, relations were also restored with Israel, and a shipment of Venezuelan oil appears to have been delivered to Israel through intermediary companies.

Preparatory

Some predicted it in advance, but certainly in hindsight the capture of Maduro and subsequent tranche of changes to Venezuela’s oil industry will be read as preparatory manoeuvres for Trump’s war in Iran. Venezuelan oil sales under Maduro as the war broke out could have been a potential thorn in the US’s side, and conversely, having access to that oil may now offset some of the impact of the war on the US economy.

That is not to say that the plan was smart, or even coherent: Venezuelan oil is expensive to extract and difficult to process, and even the current ramping up of investment will get the country nowhere near the peak of 3mn barrels a day it was producing at the turn of the millennium.

There were also separate factors at play in the US operation. Members of Trump’s cabinet, in particular Marco Rubio, have been angling for intervention in Latin America for years, and Trump himself saw Maduro as “unfinished business” from his first term in office.

Rodriguez is now forced to play by the rules of a familiar game for many countries in the Americas: restructuring its domestic market in order to make Venezuela an easier site of investment for foreign capital. In February, a law was passed which hugely weakened PDVSA, the state-owned oil company, in order to encourage big multinational oil firms to look to invest in Venezuela. PDVSA also announced that it will supply oil and derivatives to America. Since then, at least Repsol and Shell have made exploration agreements.

This is a fairly blatant undermining of the quasi-Stalinist model of the economy espoused by Hugo Chavez and his successor Maduro. Bourgeois press analysis in the West is keen to highlight Rodriguez’s “revolutionary” father and her role in Maduro’s government, but the role she is now playing is one of capitulation to US demands.

One element of that capitulation is to be celebrated: the government has released the majority of political prisoners in the country. It is a shame that this victory was not won by the Venezuelan people themselves; but it is still good for the prisoners, many of whom were arrested for protesting obvious corruption and fraud by the Maduro government. There are still hundreds of prisoners not yet been released, and laws allowing for the easy arrest of political dissidents are still on the books. The fight on that front is far from over.

Some of those released include trade union organisers and activists, who had been imprisoned for exercising their right to protest and organise industrially. A statement from the ITUC celebrated their release and called for Venezuela to uphold the rights of freedom of association and the right to organise.