Faced with the protests unleashed by the installment payment of the vacation bonus won decades ago by teachers, employees and workers in the education sector, the government was forced to back down, even after having reached an agreement with some union representatives of the ruling party, that they agreed with the Ministers of Education and Higher Education to accept Nicolás Maduro’s offer.
The first victim of this mess was the director of the National Budget Office, commissioned by Maduro to reduce public spending at the expense of taking that benefit away from education workers. Benefit nominally called “vacation bonus”, but since the appearance of hyperinflation it is used by the beneficiaries to cover the enormous deficits caused by the miserable monthly salaries that are earned.
The regime’s rhetoric has tried to portray the change in attitude as a sign of the generosity of Nicolás Maduro, the “worker president.” But nobody bites the cane. The people know that the pressure unleashed by the combative and united democratic trade union and union leadership and the social bases was too high for a regime that lives seeing threats of popular insurrections everywhere and that fears that a massive revolt will generate crises similar to those produced during recent years in Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador and Bolivia. In all these nations, citizens have mobilized on a large scale demanding salary improvements, control of inflation -especially of the prices of basic necessities-, improvements in public services and improvement of the quality of life.
The case of Cuba must have the high hierarchy of madurismo very concerned. The deteriorating situation on the island has reached alarming levels. As serious or worse than those recorded during the Special Period, when – after the collapse of the Soviet Union – Russia abruptly suspended the millionaire subsidy that it had granted the Castro dictatorship for decades. That financial bomb kept her afloat. A large-scale social explosion in Cuba, which forces the stagnant communist nomenclature to introduce important democratic changes, would change the international panorama of the madurista scheme and weaken the strength of the patronage exercised by the political mentors of the Venezuelan president.
In addition to showing the terrifying fear that Maduro has of popular mobilizations, the struggle to achieve the immediate and total payment of the vacation bonus for education workers left several lessons.
When people have concrete reasons to mobilize, they do so. It activates. Lose the fear. This mobilization is enhanced and becomes more effective when it is intertwined with a united and combative leadership that guides it. Union and trade union cohesion was decisive in increasing the strength of the protests. In the marches not only the sectors that traditionally identify with the opposition to the regime participated. Groups from the Chavista-Madurista bases affected by the disastrous decision to fragment and postpone the payment of the vacation bonus also acted. This circumstantial fact must have set off the alarms of the situational rooms that monitor the course of national reality and report to Maduro and other heads of the regime. It was not a complaint confined to the sphere of “oppositionists”, but rather a complaint raised by groups close to the government. Of those who revolve in their orbit of influence. This event changed the face of the claim.
The different guilds and unions came out stronger. This significant and rapid victory should revitalize them, as well as other sectors of the country, who can see how important goals can be achieved through organization and mobilization. On the nearest horizon is the repeal of the Instructive Onapre, a legal monstrosity that was not discussed with the unions of the sector, creates a wide range of labor disincentives and, once again, threatens old labor conquests. In the case of teachers, it eliminates from the full salary the premiums granted for obtaining master’s or doctoral degrees, or for seniority; in the case of teachers or researchers who manage to rise to the rank of full professor, the maximum that a teacher can obtain in their academic career.
With this partial victory, but so significant, the unions and guilds, like their associates, are in excellent conditions to combat the government’s outrages. Much better than before, when it seemed that the regime could commit any abuse without anyone flinching. The mistreated were waiting for a new outrage to be committed.
We must promote this day in which even the Chavistas themselves rose up against Maduro.
@trinomarquezc
