National Front of Struggle of the Working Class

(Frente Nacional de Lucha de la Clase Trabajadora (FNLCT)

Caracas. September 28, 2017

Compatriot Delcy Rodriguez

Office of the President of the National Constituent Assembly

With a copy to:  Member of the Constituent Assembly Francisco Torrealba, President of the Commission of Workers of the National Constituent Assembly (ANC)

 

Please receive cordial, patriotic, and class greetings in the name of the organizations of the workers’ movement and class-based unions that are part of the National Front of Struggle of the Working Class (FNLCT).

Respected compatriot, on September 1 we received the kind attention of Dr. Isaias Rodriguez, second vice president of the ANC and, later, on September 5, a delegation of FNLCT met with ANC member Francisco Torrealba, President of the Workers Commission of the ANC, both received a document (FOLDER OF PETITIONS AND PROPOSALS), containing our thinking, programmatic formulations and concrete proposals to solve, in an extraordinary way, the grave problems that thousands of workers, both women and men, are suffering from in our country.  The decision to make this approach to those who make up the sovereign National Constituent Assembly is due to the fact that we have already experienced regular instances with the National Executive without having achieved the corresponding solutions.

In the consigned document we say, and before you we reaffirm, that “we come to the ANC assuming that it holds in its hands the real possibility to activate a process aimed at producing deep and broadhip changes in the relationship of power and in the economic and social structure, with the leading action of the workers and the people in general.

The ANC will be a revolutionary instrument only if it puts itself at the service of the working class and the popular masses in their struggles to defeat the injustices and oppression of the capitalist system that continues to dominate our national reality with the dependent and rentier mode that characterizes it. The ANC will only fulfill an authentic revolutionary role if it effectively contributes to creating the conditions for the dismantling of the capitalist mode of production and the beginning of the transition to socialist society led by the Venezuelan proletariat in alliance with the peasantry and the popular movement as a whole.”

Compatriot, we are convinced that the battle in defense of the country against the aggressions and threats that the nation and the Venezuelan people suffer because of US imperialism requires the wide unity of all the working people and of the political and social forces committed to the national and popular interests.  

It is because of this that corrections and rectifications are required that permit us to overcome problems that impede the active and convinced participation of the working class and the working people of the cities and the countryside in the tasks of defense and consolidation of our sovereignty and in the search for a society of full justice and real freedom. 

It is necessary to raise the morale of wide sectors of both men and women workers who are being punished by unwise decisions made by the National Government and by unpunished actions by the capitalists who, in their efforts to preserve and increase their profits, strike with a vengeance against the interest of the leaving the rights won since 1999 with the beginning of the Bolivarian process of national liberation on the scrap heap.

With these fundamentals and awaiting a prompt and effective response from the leadership of this Constituent Assembly, in continuation, we will then briefly and accurately present the proposals for immediate action in favor of the working class that the FNLCT proposes to the ANC in exercise of its supraconstitutional power.

We propose that, together with the revolutionary organizations of the workers, campesinos, communal and popular movements, the National Constituent Assembly, in exercise of the original popular power, take executive action in social, economic, political, labor and agrarian matters, for the purpose of reversing and correcting decisions that violate the rights and affect the interests of the working class and working people of the city and the countryside;

In the same way, to establish acts that generate decisive revolutionary leadership of the working class and the working people of the city and the countryside to overcome the crisis by deepening the revolutionary changes in favor of national sovereignty of the working people and of the real socialist perspective.

Among other measures and decrees, we propose:

– Reversing the thousands of unfair and illegal firings committed in public and private companies. Specifically to proceed to declare null illegal dismissals without prior qualification as mandated by the LOTTT* for workers with rights under the law (trade union, maternity, paternity or other) and protected by the unjust firing decree ordered by the National Executive in Decree No. 2,158 with  force of law for three years, dated December 28, 2015.

In revoking such illegal firings, the State and its organs, in compliance with what was expressly ordered by the National Constituent Assembly, shall proceed to restore to legal status the workers affected, in application of the protection of the right to work and the guarantees for labor stability instituted by the CRBV (Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) in its articles 87, 89 and particularly 93.

Particularly, we urge the immediate annulment of illegal direct and indirect dismissals contrary to the current Constitution committed in public and private employment workplaces such as such as: Abastos Bicentenarios S.A.Network, sugar mills affiliated to CVA Azúcar, CEALCO and other companies attached to CVAL, PDVAL, Grupo de Empresas Polar, Metro de Caracas, Diario Vea, among many others.

– Similarly, we ask the ANC to nullify the ratings used for unlawful firing of workers by labor inspectors biased on the side of employers.  These inspectors dismiss the allegations and evidence of workers particularly in the cases of trade union leaders and delegates who promote trade union projects and who assume the defense of the interests of the working class.

– Dismiss judicial proceedings and dismissals of workers (in certain situations presented as forced resignations) that have occurred in the event of acts of harassment and police-employer blackmail, criminalization and prosecution to favor the employers against workers, particularly against fighters of the workers’ movement and class-based trade unions, sanctioned by the employers and by functionaries of the police, military, prosecutors and judges who have lent themselves to such acts that only serve the capitalists and strike at the working class.  The workers who are victims of such practices must be released from charges, released from prisons, recover their dignity, and be fully restored in the legal situation.

To these effects, immediately to act against the cases of repression, police blackmail, criminalization and legal proceedings, that are presented or have been presented in the workplaces of Productora El Simbolo, C.A., La Monserratina C.A. and Induvar C.A. (all in Tejerías, Aragua State); Bus Barinas and in the UBV (Barinas State); Bus Yaracuy and Fruit Processor and Packer Nirgua (Yaracuy); Grupo Souto and several companies of the Polar Group; among other serious situations, particularly in workplaces located in the states Miranda, Carabobo, Aragua, Lara and any other that is reported and demonstrable.

– Resolve the cases of outsourcing and precarization of labor existing in both the public and private sectors, obliging the Venezuelan State authorities to comply with and enforce the provisions of the Constitution and the Organic Labor Law of Workers. (Ley Orgánica del Trabajo, los Trabajadores y Trabajadoras LOTTT).

– Suspend and reverse processes of dismantling and reprivatization of state enterprises, which must be recovered with a new model of management of collective leadership based on the control of workers and popular organizations in their area, in cooperation with authorities of the National Government.  In this development, we must proceed to investigate and punish acts of corruption and irregular management in such productive and service entities reported by the workers and the communities.

– Define the legal situation of companies intervened, occupied and created by the National Government, legally converting them into socially owned entities with a management model of shared and collective direction with the implementation of worker and popular control.  


– Establish worker and popular control over the production, distribution and marketing of basic goods and services.

Reiterating our consideration and respect, we took our leave awaiting a prompt response.

 Translated by Kay Tillow and Jose Cruz