Memorandum-Circular 2792: A cornerstone of Maduro's neoliberal adjustment program

The following article is republished from Tribuna Popular, the organ of the Communist Party of Venezuela. These articles are essential for challenging the spread of ideas perpetuated by opportunist forces that claim the government of Nicolás Maduro is "implementing socialism.".

On October 11, 2018, the then Minister of Labor, Eduardo Piñate ─now again at the head of that portfolio─, signed Memorandum-Circular 2792 with the following subject: “Guidelines to be implemented in collective labor negotiations within the framework of the Program for Recovery, Growth and Economic Prosperity.”

In summary, Memorandum-Circular 2792 established:

1) That from that moment on, in the collective bargaining processes, the starting wage for the salary scales, would be the national minimum wage ─for then Bs. 1,800 per month (US$30) and currently Bs. 130 (US$3.50)─ and that in case a calculation wage percentage higher than the minimum wage or a multiplier factor thus had been established in the collective bargaining agreements, it should be submitted for review to adjust it downwards.

2) Those collective bargaining agreements that had established economic and socioeconomic benefits, as well as salary scales with calculation factors that exceeded the national minimum wage, should be subject to review through technical tables, if the employers considered that such amounts put “at risk ” the source and the social process of work.

3) In the case of the public sector, the collective bargaining agreements would have to be adjusted to the salary tables unilaterally imposed by the National Executive at that time.

Such impositions destroyed the essence of the collective bargaining agreements and are unconstitutional for violating Article 96 of the Constitution (right to enter into collective bargaining agreements with no other requirements than those established by law); they derogate de facto the principles of progressiveness, intangibility and unrenounceability of rights (Article 89); they violate the right to a salary sufficient to allow a decent living (Article 91), as well as Article 3 of our Magna Carta, which proclaims the essential purposes of the Venezuelan State.

The much protested Memorandum-Circular 2792 established an employer's labor policy; which guarantees unlimited profit margins to the capitalists and great savings to the State, while imposing conditions of misery on the Venezuelan working class. These guidelines, also contrary to the norms of the Organic Labor Law (Lottt) and Convention 98 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), authorize public and private employers to reduce and/or leave without effect the salary and socioeconomic clauses of the collective bargaining agreements ─and even to reduce the wages of workers not covered by collective bargaining agreements─, with the consent of officials of the Ministry of Labor and the unworthy complicity of a handful of trade unionists at the service of the top of the Government, who, by signing the treason agreement, accepted the sudden death of collective bargaining in our country.

Memorandum-Circular 2792 cynically states that the wage policy, derived from the neoliberal adjustment program of the government of Nicolás Maduro, “seeks to rationalize the fair distribution of wealth among all workers (…) smoothing out the great economic differences that have fostered the existence of privileged groups among male and female workers.” However, these manipulations do not resist the slightest scientific analysis because in Venezuela, where the capitalist mode of production prevails, the unjust distribution of wealth exists between capital and labor; not between some workers and others.

Venezuelan class-conscious trade unionism rejects the crude argument of the existence of “privileged groups of working men and women” with which they try to justify the anti-worker labor policy of the Maduro government. The labor conquests, far from being privileges, are the fruit of historical struggles of the Venezuelan working class, which has fought against the anti-worker pretensions of different governments, very especially during the 80s and 90s of the last century, and which today are applied in an aggressive and authoritarian manner, using a falsely “revolutionary” rhetoric.

From class unionism -in coincidence with other forces of the labor and popular movement─, we insist on the need for a broad unity of action of the working class and of all the Venezuelan people, to confront and defeat the anti-worker, anti- popular, anti-national and anti-democratic policies of the government of Nicolás Maduro.

Pedro Eusse (Secretary General of the CUTV)