Venezuela in the Eye of the Storm

[Catherina]

Venezuela in the Eye of the Storm

Dan Kovalik, Human and labor rights lawyer
Posted: 06/03/2013

...

From eight in the morning 'til noon every day, a team of professors, their students and CNE support staff, operating out of the CNE warehouse in the Mariches barrio of Caracas, randomly select 350 boxes containing paper vote receipts to audit. They then count each receipt in these boxes to verify whether they match up with the electronic vote count from the machines linked to each box. Demonstrating the amazing transparency of this process, this auditing is being broadcast by live webcam on the CNE website.

...

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Canada just ruled this week(

) that the 2011 election of Conservative Party candidate Stephen Harper was fraught with fraud and massive voter suppression. Yet, there have been no calls from Washington to withdraw recognition of Harper.

...

(why the capitalist class is eager to destroy the Venezuelan revolution)

Jacobo and Carlos explained to me that, through the efforts of the two-million-member CSBT union in dialogue with President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan workers are now receiving the benefit of one of the most far-reaching and progressive labor laws in the world. This labor law, which was signed into effect on May 1, 2012, was the product of a convention of 4500 worker delegates who made 19,000 proposals to President Chavez for the new law which, they explained, had the purpose of "overcoming the capitalist weaknesses in the Venezuela law" which had governed labor relations in the past.

Amongst other things, the new law

- forbids employers from firing any worker (including non-union) without just cause;

- requires businesses to share at least 15 percent of their profits with the workers;

- requires employers to pay workers severance if they lose their job for any reason;

- gives workers the right to continue running factories which employers may decide to stop operating;

- limits the work week to 40 hours and requires that workers be given two successive days off from work a week;

- grants 6 months of parental leave to mothers and 15 days to fathers, gives mothers who return to work 1.5 hours per day to breast feed and gives new fathers and mothers absolute protection from discharge for the first 2 years after the birth of their child;

- forbids all sub-contracting beginning in 2017.

The Venezuelan and U.S. ruling class are quite aware of this fact as well, and are therefore bent on destroying this revolution which represents, in the words of Noam Chomsky, "the threat of a good example." And, they see the narrow victory of Maduro as an opportunity to do just that.

..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/venezuela-in-the-eye-of-t_b_3368014.html

[naaman fletcher]

1. "- forbids all sub-contracting beginning in 2017."

What's wrong with subcontracting?

The way most small businesses get started is by being subcontractors. Whether it is construction of some sort or programming or whatever, you basically ask a large company for a small piece of work (because you don't have the background to do a big project yourself).

This is a benefit to big business.

[bemildred]

3. "subcontracting"

I am going to hazard a guess as to what that is about: I think this is about not being allowed to make "employees" into "sub-contactors" in order to circumvent labor protections.

I have run into such "sub-contracting" or "exempt" situations a number of times, sometimes it was good, sometimes it was not, but in every case it was about limiting my true employers liabilities and obligations to me, and it always creates a class system.

I doubt that it is about preventing businesses from making and enforcing contracts between themselves.

[naaman fletcher]

4. Ah yes,

You are probably right. thanks.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Got any stats for "the way most small businesses get started"?

It has not been my impression that it is mostly by subcontracting--unless you're talking about, say, Haliburton (turned from a maybe not small but failing business into a big, BIG, flush government/Pentagon subcontractor by Dick Cheney being vice president).

Small businesses, it seems to me, generally do NOT have sponsors--corporate or government--have to beg for investors--generally friends and family--and are created by the diligence, sweat-equity, bravery, intelligence and creativity, and, above all, persistence, of the small business owners themselves, on their own, often risking everything--their savings, their homes--to do so. That is the case in the U.S. anyway and in other corporate-run countries. Small businesses get little or no help from the banksters or the government, and corporations often try to kill them off with price wars and other powermongering, including the deliberate destruction of downtown retail areas and buying up shopping malls to jack up the rents and squeeze out small competitors.

I come from a small business culture, and your notion of the benevolent corporation fostering small businesses by subcontracting strikes me as ludicrous. Big business is vampire-like. It sucks the blood out of people, small businesses, communities and democracy itself--not to mention its unconscionable pollution of Planet Earth.

Big corporations often sub-contract to get around labor contracts. THAT is the reason for this law, which was proposed by the labor unions. I would think they would know, on an intimate basis, what big businesses do to rob workers of their pay, their benefits and good working conditions. In fact, I KNOW that subcontracting to get out of labor contracts has been a problem in Venezuela, which is no socialist monolith, by any means. It is a mixed economy. The rich still do rotten things there.

[naaman fletcher]

6. "most" was an exxageration

that "most" is not right. But:

In construction contracting it almost always works that way. That is the way you get experience. You have a crew of a couple of guys and you get small subcontracts and slowly build up.

This is also pretty much the ONLY way government contracting works. For most government contracts you have to realistically have been a sub-contractor first in order to prove you can keep proper accounting and such. The government then mandates small business set-asides in all government contracting. In a typical government contract there is a 15% small business set-aside, so yes the larger companies do act big-brotherly to smaller companies in government contracting.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Greatest respect for the author, Dan Kovalik.

[center][/center]

He works long and hard on behalf of the working people of the world, at great personal risk, OF COURSE.

Thank you for this article.