GFTU BGCM Report 2019

VENEZUELA STUDY VISIT July 2018

Report by Edward Derrick (Nautilus International) and Nicole Johnson (Public and Commercial Services Union)

Earlier this year in April, Nicole and I were very fortunate to be nominated by our fellow young worker colleagues at the GFTU Youth Festival to represent them, our own unions and the GFTU on an international study trip to Caracas. The aim was to gain a deeper appreciation of the social movement currently in progress in Venezuela. The trip was originally planned to be a week long but due to unfortunate cancellations by Air France it was reduced to just five days. The aim of this report is to illustrate some of the experiences we were honoured to have and to extend our appreciation to the GFTU for making such a trip possible. We arrived in the evening of Monday 16th August and enjoyed a forty-minute car journey from the coastal airport through the mountains heading to our hotels in downtown Caracas. We immediately noticed what a beautifully diverse country Venezuela was, and it was unlike anything we had ever witnessed before, with small clusters of very basic houses perched high up on the lush, green mountain side. Before we knew it, we had arrived at a very grand, yet basic by western standards, hotel called Gran Melia Caracas. Due to the limited time we had in the country it was important to hit the ground running to fit as much as possible into our schedule! Our first day was a real eye opener into the standards of living many Venezuelans experience with high traffic density, congestion and poor road networks. We started with a meeting with the President of the FBTTT at their headquarters. The FBTTT is the Federation of Bolivian Workers in transport and is tied with the IFT (International Transport Workers Federation) and is a combination of all the unions associated with travel in Venezuela. The current President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro was a member and rep in this union! We had a short Q&A session where we discussed the structure of the union and how they organise themselves to be as effective for their members as possible when it comes to negotiating for workers’ rights up to a governmental level. We found that due to the economical and humanitarian crisis in the country, the current projects include workplace committees who are elected to ensure that factories and factory owners are producing goods and ensuring those are distributed in the normal market, instead of being held or going to the black market. It was very interesting and, in many respects, like the process adopted by the GFTU here in the UK. The afternoon consisted of trying out the metro system which in Venezuela is free of charge due to the financial stresses currently being experienced by

the country. The metro or cable car system in Caracas is elevated and goes over a working class community in Caracas, previously people would have to walk 2 hours up and down flights of stairs to get to and from work. The idea was proposed and actioned in December 2009 and there are now 5 stations in the city of Caracas but only 3 are in working order. The cable cars led us to our next stop, a concert performed by the children in the working class town who were celebrating their final day of the school year. the school was situated in one of the favelas and the school had students from the ages of 5 years old to 16. There included dancing, singing and a full orchestra. Children from this specific town are dubbed as some of the best percussionists in the country. We finished up the day in the hotel lobby by having a meeting with the Bolivian Petroleum Young Workers regional committee, which was of particular interest to Ed due to the nature of his work. We discussed how the oil industry worked and the importance of the petroleum industry for a country like Venezuela. The regional committee is organised across the country and Chavez, the previous president combined all the different trade unions into one federation. It allows them a clear pathway to produce recommendations to improve the company and their working environment. Our second day started nice and early with a trip across the city to a previous military base which had been set up as a government facility to manufacture electronics for students from primary school to higher education who couldn’t afford them. The factory designed tablets and mini laptops using Portuguese and Chinese technology. Interestingly we were told that no trees were harmed when creating the building and the facility was designed around the trees. Windows make use of natural light which leads to less electricity being used. The facility is not connected to public electricity network, uses its own electricity and is 700 square metres in size. Inside the factory, it was high-tech and

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