Venezuela Court Orders Worker Protection

Friday June 13, 2003 3:29 AM By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER Associated Press Writer

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - A court ordered the government on Thursday to restore thousands of oil workers' protection against being fired - a decision that could force the rehiring or employees dismissed for staging a strike aimed at toppling the president.

Labor Minister Maria Iglesias rejected the ruling and said the government would not rehire some 18,000 employees it has fired at the state-run oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA.

There is no turning back in regard to these firings,'' Iglesias told the state-run television channel. A firing freeze for those (workers) has no value.''

The labor law in question had protected workers from being fired during the period when they were forming their union.

Last year the labor ministry stripped management level workers belonging to the Unapetrol labor union of that right, but the court temporarily reversed that measure as well to study its legality.

Unapetrol leaders, who claim to represent all of the 18,000 workers who were fired, said they would use the ruling to get their jobs back.

``This is excellent news, which tells us that we have (the right to) a firing freeze and that our dismissal was unjustified,'' said Horacio Medina, president of Unapetrol.

President Hugo Chavez said the workers were fired out of the need to cut a bloated bureaucracy and rid the industry of ``coup-plotting'' employees who were only interested in removing him from office by unconstitutional means.

In December 2002, executives at PDVSA staged a strike that caused severe fuel shortages and temporarily paralyzed Venezuela's oil industry - the world's fifth largest oil exporter - before it ended in early February.

Venezuela's largest labor union and business chamber joined the strike, accusing Chavez of riding roughshod over the nation's democratic institutions, scaring off foreign investment with left-leaning economic policies and dividing the South American country along class lines.

Chavez, a former paratrooper who is facing the worst crisis of his four-year rule, denied the allegations and accused his opponents of trying to grab power by any means possible. He said strikers should be punished for the hardships they caused among the population.

During the months since the strike, the government has succeeded in bringing oil production back to normal levels.

Venezuela's opposition is pushing for Chavez's ouster through a referendum, which the Constitution allows halfway through a president's term - in Chavez's case, August.

In a related development, ruling party lawmakers boycotted a parliamentary session Thursday to avoid what they said was planned opposition violence.

The boycott has virtually paralyzed the National Assembly at a time when it must ahead with organizing a referendum on whether Chavez should step down later this year.