Venezuela's Oil Workers Protest Low Pay - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Talk about what you've seen in the news today.

Moderator: PoFo Today's News Mods

#13822979
Yesterday I was discussing the unusually high wage raises granted by the Chavez regime to military officers, and compared them to doctor's wage increases. To show the situation is indeed quite unusual, I'm linking an article from yesterday's paper discussing an oil worker's protest in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela. Workers are protesting low wages and the failure by the government (or the state oil company, PDVSA) to meet the union contract

http://www.eluniversal.com/economia/111 ... f-contract

Workers' protests continue at Venezuela's Puerto La Cruz refinery, in the northeastern state of Anzoátegui. The oil workers are requesting the payment of their contractual benefits. Workers gathered and had some meetings in the refinery and handed out fliers. These actions will continue until the authorities of state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) meet each of their requests. Oil workers complained that the oil industry has violated 80% of the current collective bargaining agreement.


I have friends working in the oil industry in Puerto La Cruz, and I know first hand they are grossly underpaid. It has to be incredibly insulting to see the government lavish so much money on the military, who are a bunch of parasites and do nothing for the nation, while neglecting oil workers' pay. Oil industry workers are Venezuela's lifeblood. The lack of investment and poor pay are the reasons why oil production is going down and the facilities are starting to fail. Talk about a stupid government, they are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
#13822982
Social_Critic wrote:I have friends working in the oil industry in Puerto La Cruz, and I know first hand they are grossly underpaid. It has to be incredibly insulting to see the government lavish so much money on the military, who are a bunch of parasites and do nothing for the nation, while neglecting oil workers' pay.

Another corrupt "socialist" state that does not adhere to basic socialism.
#13824469
The military pay was long overdue after they got a 40 % raise last year? So let's see, they get a 40 % raise in 2010, and a 50 % raise in 2011, and meanwhile oil field workers, the ones who create the wealth the government uses to give these obscene pay raises to the military, are protesting low pay and lack of legal payments they are supposed to get.

Do you realize oil production is dropping in Venezuela? And this is one reason why they are having to borrow so much money? Government issued production statistics are fake. And one reason why oil production isn't what it used to be is the poor treatment oil workers get from the government. Chavistas are putting the noose around their own necks. Enjoy the consequences. :D
#13824531
The military pay was long overdue after they got a 40 % raise last year? So let's see, they get a 40 % raise in 2010, and a 50 % raise in 2011, and meanwhile oil field workers, the ones who create the wealth the government uses to give these obscene pay raises to the military, are protesting low pay and lack of legal payments they are supposed to get.

that is 50% for officers. Who says the 40% isn't just for the non-officers.
Besides that, the Venezuelan government raised the minimum wage as well.
#13825182
The reports I linked stated clearly the raise last year was for all ranks. The raise this year is for officers. This gives them a doubling of salary in a bit over a year.

The minimum wage is raised periodically, in line with inflation. But it doesn't reach the obscene levels seen for military officer pay raises.

Also, I'd like to bring back the original post, which is that Oil Workers are protesting low pay, and remind you that other labor sectors are also complaining or striking about their wages and labor conditions - note the comment below about pay for miltiary doctors:

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/health ... -shambles/

Since June 30, Venezuela’s public hospital doctors have been on strike. Their grievances include low salaries and difficult working conditions at public hospitals. Venezuelan Federation of Medical Doctors, which is leading the strike, claims that almost 90 percent of the medical community is adhering to the strike and that only pre-scheduled appointments and a few minor surgeries are taking place in hospitals across the country. Douglas León Natera, the federation president, points out that doctors working in Venezuela’s state hospitals have one of the world’s lowest pay scales, earning $535 a month, and even less, $466 a month, in military hospitals.


There are strikes all the time, because inflation eats buying power and the state doesn't pay what it should - another example

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-1 ... -says.html

Venezuela’s state mining company Corporacion Venezulana de Guayana is affected by a strike this week as workers seek unpaid benefits, El Nacional reported. Striking workers have blocked access to subsidiaries of the state company known as CVG including Venalum, Alcasa, Bauxilum, Carbonorca, Sidor and Ferrominera de Orinoco, the Caracas-based newspaper reported today. Workers are also asking for new boards of directors because efforts to restore financial solvency haven’t been successful, the newspaper reported, citing Venalum union President Manual Diaz. The strike is the third protest at the company this year, and Mining Minister Jose Khan will hold talks with union leaders on May 19 in Caracas, El Nacional reported.


I'd like to add, the output of aluminium and other metals at state-owned plants dropped in 2010. This is happening all over the Venezuelan economy, as we see less and less production, more and more strikes, and more people preparing for street action to protest against the idiots who are ruining the Venezuelan economy. My friend, you are backing the wrong horse, these Chavista mafias are ruining Venezuela, and the labor force is fully aware they are responsible. They have been in power for 12 years, everything they touch they ruin, and the country is increasingly desperate.
#13825205
Social_C: Did I or didn't I put up charts about the wage incomes of Venezuelans? The charts showed that the amount of people below the povertyline got slashed from 50% to 30%. And that the wealth distribution was better, as in there were less extreme rich, the same to slightly bigger middle class and less in the lower segments.

You can bitch and whine all you want about people wanting more and more money, but as long as the charts look the way they are... I really do fail to see the problem.
#13825215
You fail to see the problem, because you focus on income distribution as the main factor. I'm very much in favor of equitable income distribution, but this can't be used as the main factor to judge government performance.

Let me give you an example, I'll create three series, one of which is national disposable income per capita, the other is percent of the population below a given poverty line, and the third is the income received by the average family in the lowest 20 % of the population (what we could call "the poor").

Disposable Income per Capita:............. 6000 5500 5000 4500 4000
Percent of the Population in Poverty:.....50.......40.....35.....30.....25
Average Income, Lowest 20 %..............2000 1900 1850 1800 1750

In this hypothetical example, the per capita disposable income is lower over time, this is caused by two reasons, one is the drop in disposable national income as more and more money is used to pay debt incurred in the past, the population increases, and the economy fails to grow due to mismanagement and poor investment direction.

The percent of the population in poverty, given the actions of this hypothetical government, drops. But this drops because the definition of what's poverty is somewhat arbitrary. I assure you, a lower middle class family in Venezuela lives worse than a poor person in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

But what happens to average income for the lowest 20 %, even if you improve income distribution? It drops, because the drop in disposable income per capita outpaces the efforts to re-destribute income.

So the key lesson is that, for you to have better income distribution, you had better worry about having income to re-destribute. When you see people like doctors, oil workers, and miners striking due to low wages, this is a bad sign. Remember, the low wages are driven because there's high inflation, and the people in charge (Chavez et al) do not increase wages with inflation. So what a large portion of the population sees is a pay cut in real terms.

When trained/educated individuals see themselves suffering pay cuts and the government behaves to cut their life style, they have a tendency to protest and if they see no redress, they turn against the government. Many of them, if they can, leave the country. And this is what happens in Venezuela (like happened in Cuba), a large portion of the most productive, trained, intelligent individuals either spend a lot of time on strike (ie not working and making goodies), or they just pack up and leave. Both effects tend to deteriorate the economy. And this is what is happening in Venezuela. To cover the gap, the government borrows money.

Now, you say everybody borrows. But nobody borrows like Venezuela does - Venezuela is borrowing at a time when oil prices are way way up. So what happens when oil prices go down? They borrow more and more? Eventuallly they have to service the debt, and they turn out like Greece. But Greece has their pals the Germans and others backing them, and Venezuela has what? Cuba the parasite? The Chinese who are willing to lend as long as they get to own Venezuela? Furthermore, and this is something I am seeing with my own eyes, the brain drain and flight of the technical professional class are becoming a really serious problem. This is reflected in really poor performance by PDVSA and other state owned firms, which are increasingly managed by incompetents, and whose technical personnel is really weak. And as you weaken the "brain sector", then you end up with really lousy decisions, and this is what we see day after day, it is a if the country were being run by idiots and 10 year olds.

So what happens next, when Chavez has cancer and nobody knows what's going to happen? We see the Chavistas preparing for the self-coup. They raise military wages, tell the labor sector to screw itself, but the military has to be coddled - because they are the ones the regime counts on to fire on the people when the take the streets. And this is what is going on in Venezuela.
#13825323
You fail to see the problem, because you focus on income distribution as the main factor. I'm very much in favor of equitable income distribution, but this can't be used as the main factor to judge government performance.

I am not using that as a main focus. I also put in the povertyline. The amount of people being poor is being slashed while the income distribution is getting better. Those are good signs, dispite messages that people complain about their low wages.
#13825720
The number of poor people is indeed lower now. But one big reason has been the huge increase in oil prices experienced since 1999. Evidently previous governments were quite unfair to poor people. I myself remarked this to Venezuelans when I arrived, and I also noted that, even under Chavez, there was a tendency for governments to provide extra services to the upper middle class and ignore the needs of the poor.

But this issue, ignoring the needs of the poor, continues under Chavez. This is one reason why the government has done so little to fight crime - which is a terrible problem in poor neighborhoods. In other areas, such as the public health care system, the Chavez approach has also failed, because the solution they applied was a false solution. They brought in "Cuban doctors" and installed a parallel "Cuban system" while neglecting the public health system, failing to maintain hospitals, allowing criminals to enter health facilities and terrorize personnel, and pretty much keeping the system in the terrible conditions it had when Chavez took over.

Now, those of us who have seen the way it works close up, realize the parallel "Cuban system" doesn't provide the health care the people need. Nor does the public health care system deal with the problem. But there is a lot of money being funneled to Cuba to pay for the parallel system. The cost of a Cuban doctor to the Venezuelan government is about $3000 USD per month, this is, using the SITME rate, about 4-5 times what they pay a Venezuelan doctor. So it's evident to us the Barrio Adentro (the parallel Cuban system) is a device used to subsidize Cuba's economy. Meanwhile, because so many medical personnel left Cuba to go to Venezuela, Cubans have suffered from poor health care delivery (I assume you do realize Cuba didn't have thousands of medical personnel sitting around waiting to go to Venezuela).

But let's go back to the OP. Why have oil workers protesting low pay and failure to pay them what they are due? That's non-sense. Today, Venezuela is unable to meet its OPEC quota. It produces a lot less than it did. But at the same time it is borrowing money and running a huge deficit. So doesn't it make sense to pay oil workers properly? Or do you think I'm inventing the protests? They are happening all the time, and the government's behavior is senseless - because many of those underpaid workers are moving to Colombia, Qatar, Canada, Australia, and just about anywhere they can find work, and Venezuela suffers from lack of trained personnel. Which is ruining the industry. And oil exports are by far Venezuela's main income. Treating oil workers so poorly is something only a government run by idiots would do.
#13825753
Maas wrote:I am not using that as a main focus. I also put in the povertyline. The amount of people being poor is being slashed while the income distribution is getting better. Those are good signs, dispite messages that people complain about their low wages.


Its not clear if the "poverty line" mentioned here is an absolute or relative one. If its absolute - then there are probably less poor people (only probably so because Venezuela has a high inflation rate - over 25%. People might be making more, but are able to buy less). If its relative there might actually be more poor people, but the distribution could be more equal.

Example: In country A, 100% of the population lives off 1 dollar a day. If we use a relative poverty line, no one lives under it! No poor people!

In country B a third of the population lives off 10 dollars a day, a third lives off 20 dollars a day, and a third lives off 30 dollars a day. With a relative poverty line a third of the population are poor! And income is not evenly distributed!

Which country would you rather live in? Good question.

As for Venezuela's economy, looking at their macroeconomic indicators, most are not horrible - except for that high inflation, and perhaps the unbalanced budget (-5.3% of GDP).

Taking into consideration they have a lot of oil and the price of oil has been very high in the past few years - both just dumb luck - I can't say Venezuela's economic performance is impressive (Chile for example has been doing a lot better).
#13825762
I started this thread to discuss the ongoing workers' strikes all over Venezuela. Evidently the government is suffering from cash flow problems at a time when oil prices are near record highs, so it's quite surprising to see how little emphasis they give to at least keep the working class relatively happy. After all, they can't expect to win future elections if the working class feels they are not looking out for workers' interests.

The regime, however, seems to be more and more irrational by the day. Here's a link to an article about ongoing workers' conflicts and strikes in the basic metals industries.

http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-p ... ons-at-war

As you will see, they are now using shock troops to attack union workers protesting at plant gates, and trying to form their own state controlled unions to counter the traditional union leadership. I won't get into all the gory details, and the article doesn't give the reader a full context, but it's just another item to add to the puzzle.

Regarding indicators, the high debt ratio and high inflation are the tip of the iceberg. For example, look at Venezuelan bond ratings and their spread, or the way they are being issued - the timing is bizarre to say the least. Add to it other bad signs, such as the flight of the professional classes, lower oil production volumes, the drop in GDP in 2009 and 2010, the increasing crime rate, lower electricity production, and other factors, and you see a nation in decline and disarray, headed towards a huge train wreck.
#13825791
Its not clear if the "poverty line" mentioned here is an absolute or relative one.

Dunno for shure what the definition of povery (line) is. I dont think it is unreasonable to say the worldbank is good enough to make that call on who is poor and who is not. And in this case the orriginal data are from the worldbank. So..

The number of poor people is indeed lower now.

So people can whine and bitch about their wages all they want.
But overall, fast amounts of people are starting to live above the poverty line. And overall it is not at the expense of the middle class, but only the upper class. Big deal.
#13825869
Maas wrote:Dunno for shure what the definition of povery (line) is. I dont think it is unreasonable to say the worldbank is good enough to make that call on who is poor and who is not. And in this case the orriginal data are from the worldbank. So..



The world's bank poverty line is living off $1.25 at 2005 purchasing-power parity (PPP) per day. So if people now live off $1.50 a day they are "no longer poor". And taking into account the high inflation in Venezuela it really means nothing.
#13826747
But overall, fast amounts of people are starting to live above the poverty line. And overall it is not at the expense of the middle class, but only the upper class. Big deal.


You would have to support this with statistics. I don't see the upper class hurting as much as the little guy when inflation rages. I use the description of middle class used by my friends, who happened to be in the middle, but weren't exactly that well off. A typical middle class Venezuelan barely makes ends meet, doesn't have much saved (because banks pay interest rates lower than the inflation rate, so it's stupid to put money away), but has a little bit of credit (ie has a couple of credit cards), and probably sends his kids to private school. This sector of the population is really getting hurt by the Chavez regime, inflation eats their salaries, and they find themselves with a very insecure future, with savings out of the question, holding foreign currency in a mattress illegal, facing a huge crime wave, food and electricity shortages, and no way to invest in a rental property for when they get old because the Chavez regime is likely to nationalize it anyway. So please don't tell me about the Chavez regime being good for the middle class. Why do you think the Middle class hates chavez and his mafia?
#13826866
Social_Critic wrote:You would have to support this with statistics.

I have sourced this with wikipedia as a source for you before. That source showed the middle class is not getting smaller unlike you pretend to be. You never sourced that for shure.
The world's bank poverty line is living off $1.25 at 2005 purchasing-power parity (PPP) per day. So if people now live off $1.50 a day they are "no longer poor". And taking into account the high inflation in Venezuela it really means nothing.

I have found that one too, but there is some other way to measure it, so it seems. As in... $1.25 a day for an Amemircan or $5 a day... will still make you poor as fuk. So it depends a lot more what you can buy for $1.25 than anything else. And indeed high inflation is terrible for low income, except when the minimum wage is increased by that amount.
#13826970
But the minimum wage isn't increased by that amount, I think. Let's look over the latest raise

http://www.apsglobal.co.uk/payroll-blog ... -2011/item

If we look at the minimum wage raises, they always seem to lag inflation.

But let's go over the OP again, and recall how you introduced this point of yours.....I posted an article showing Venezuelan oil workers are protesting low pay. And I have shown in many posts that protests by all sorts of workers, from doctors to aluminium industry union workers, are taking place.

You introduced a defense of the regime stating that the minimum wage was being raised and tracking inflation. But I can't find any evidence that any wage increases, except the ones for military officers, are coming close to matching inflation. I know first hand because i lived there that wages my co-workers received were slowly being eroded - that is, they received wage increases lower than the inflation rate. So I can honestly say that I can see statistics showing these worker protests do have a solid reason behind them. And I can discuss anecdotal evidence, which confirms people feel they are being short changed.

Look, it doesn't take a genius to realize Chavez is on his last legs. Not only did he have cancer, which evidently hurt his ability to move around and be dynamic. His governance, which was bad, is now even worse. And now the government is focused on holding on to power no matter what. But what i can't get is, how can anybody be so stupid to neglect the oil field workers, the medical health workers, aluminium union workers, etc? Do they think they are going to win anythinng if just about everybody who does an honest lick of useful work is against the government?
#13828302
The raise in 2010 was done in two tranches, so it did cause a lot of pain. And I don't think official inflation rates account for all costs. I keep a poor student on scholarship there, and costs have been a lot higher lately, much higher than official inflation.

Regarding the official pay for government officials, indeed it is linked to the minimum wage. It's hard to express the minimum wage in US dollars, because we have the old issue of the three exchange rates. Let's toss CADIVI out because only a few people get access to it. SITME is say 5.3 to the dollar, and the last time I used the black market it was 8.5 to the dollar. So let's say the exchange rate is about 6.5 to the USD. THis makes the minimum wage, at 1548 bolis as of September, about $238 per month.

But let's see what a doctor working at a public hospital makes:

According to Chavez, as reported in Cuban media (escambray.cu) the salary goes up to 10645 bolis, or $1637 per month. But what, there's more, because the official gazette reports the salary of a doctor to be much lower, so when the raise amount (30 %) is applied, the reality is that doctor's salaries will go up to $572 USD. I can't tell you which of these two figures is right. I do know Chavez has a tendency to lie, and some opposition figures have a tendency to lie as well. But the problem in the hospitals also involves lack of security - criminal gangs go inside the hospitals and rob personnel, as well as the frustration the medical personnel have because the equipment is a mess, and there are no supplies.

Furthermore, there's also an issue with the minimum wage...many Venezuelans are working in the informal economy, and they don't get paid according to the minimum wage. Take for example a maid, or a guy who works an occasional job moving furniture. These people make what they can, and the minimum wage doesn't really matter to them, other than they can use it to complain and ask for a bit more.

Going back to the OP, the oil workers as well as the mining industry workers are on spot strikes because the government fails to pay what they think is due. I wont get into the details. I'm just pointing out there is a lot of labor action going on, and it seems to be for differences the government could settle if it was being run by smart people. I don't think they, or you, get it - it's critical to keep the people who make things happen in Venezuela at work, rather than sitting outside in the sun protesting. But today the amount done by these key people is down, and this means national income is down (they are saved by higher oil prices, but this gig can only be played so many times). So in the end, it keeps a lot of people mad at Chavez, it keeps the economy from taking off, and it will make Chavez and his chavista scum lose the elections. Which will make them go the auto coup route and will create a huge mess.
Russia-Ukraine War 2022

Are people on this thread actually trying to argu[…]

Isn't oil and electricity bought and sold like ev[…]

@Potemkin I heard this song in the Plaza Grande […]

I (still) have a dream

Even with those millions though. I will not be ab[…]