The Devil's Excrement

It wasn’t that long ago that Hugo Chavez was blasting Venezuela’s telecom company
CANTV, majority owned by Verizon, for “not paying the workers “what the
Supreme Court had ordered in the case of workers asking to have their pensions
upgraded to current salaries and threatening to apply the
“acid and sword of the law” if the company failed to pay. Of course, the
Supreme Court has not even told CANTV how much it has to pay the workers, let
alone give them a schedule to pay. Moreover, CANTV will certainly appeal the
decision. Thus, Hugo was just grandstanding, playing for “his” gallery, pretending
to be the savior of the workers. Pretending to care so much for them…

Unless…

they are Government employees. In that case, watch out! He does not care! This
was proven yesterday when one of Chavez’ poster boy companies for “co-management”
between the workers and the ownership, state-run aluminum company Venalum,
appealed to the Supreme Court the decision by a Labor Court to make the
salaries of pensioned off workers equal to those that are currently holding the
positions. These workers were the same ones that helped block off the
President’s path when he went to Ciudad
Guayana a couple of weeks ago. This awoke Chavez’ ire
leading to his infamous statement that nobody should aspire to be rich.

Thus, in contrast with the CANTV case, in this case, it is the State that does
not want to help the workers, but you don’t hear Chavez talking about it or
threatening the company, or ordering the CEO to pay the workers, after all he
happens to be the boss of the CEO of Venalum. I guess if they work for the
state, they want to get rich, but if they work for the private sector, they
deserve what they are owed.

What a cynical double standard!

This entry was posted on October 6, 2005 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Venezuela.