Venezuelan workers to run shut firms
CARACAS - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced the creation of a programme which would allow workers at companies closed after the opposition strike earlier this year to take over the reins of their organisations. Speaking on his weekly television show “Hello Mr President", Chavez said the programme aimed to organise workers cooperatives to take control of the paralised companies.
If they had been left without work, “the workers should take over the companies and the government would support them,” he said.
He had asked his industry ministry to prepare a programme model within the constraints of the country's constitution, he said, adding that the idea was not to “invade the factories or direspect the rights of the owners, but to allow workers to control the companies."
Thousands of workers were laid off during the 63-day opposition strike which culminated in an attempt February to oust the president.
Chavez called the redundancies "an outrage and violation of the constitution", saying that his new programme was designed to protect the aggrieved workers. Chavez also used his television show to reiterate his desire for Venezuela to join Mercosur, and to create a more dynamic and politicised economic bloc.
"Now more than ever Venezuela wants to be part of Mercosur, though obviously another kind of Mercosur," Chavez said.
The bloc, which is currently made up of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, needed to become more dynamic and shake off its neo-liberal tendencies, he added.
"This Mercosur must have a political dimension to contribute to global equality, social equality. Venezuela wants to be, and can be part of Mercosur," he said.
Chavez first floated the idea of Venezuela becoming part of Mercosur in 2001 but his ambitions were thwarted. Colombian officials evoked the laws governing the Community of Andean Nations which state that the group - Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela - could only join Mercosur as a block.