In Venezuela they announced “the death of wages” while rejecting the bonus policy

”What they announced was the death of wages!”, unionists and retirees shouted this Tuesday in a demonstration against the policy of the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, to increase monthly bonuses without increasing wages, the lowest in Latin America.

“Yesterday the death of the salary was decreed, a salary that is US$ 5 with inflation that is increasing (…), they left it to disappear”, questioned the union leader Eduardo Sánchez in this protest in Caracas.

Maduro decreed an increase in the food allowance to $40 per month and established the call “economic war bond” in 30 dollars, for a total of 70 dollars that will be paid in the local currency, the bolivar, although he promised to index them to the official exchange rate.

The minimum salary is 130 bolivars per month (US$5.25), the lowest in the region, surpassed even by Cuba (US$17.5). In neighbors like Colombia and Brazil, the minimum is 285 and 264 dollars, respectively.

We are “making a tremendous effort to defend workers’ income in the midst of a brutal economic war that you know we have faced”, Maduro justified this Tuesday, referring to the United States sanctions against Venezuela.

“Genocide”

The bonuses do not affect labor benefits such as vacations or Christmas bonuses and do not reach the entire population in the same way. “It is an increase that is not very universal because there are certain people who do not receive it”, explains the economist Leonardo Vera, a professor at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV).

The food bonus, by law, must be paid to all active employees, but that of “war” is linked to Sistema Patria, a website where government subsidies and social programs are managed and to which not all Venezuelans subscribe.

Pensioners and retirees, for example, receive the minimum salary without food bonus, for not being active.

Unionists and union leaders called for intensifying protests starting next Monday.

“We are not going to see his mockery, his genocide, we are not willing for him to continue robbing each of the workers in the country”, said Hugo Valera, a pensioner of the Caracas Metro.

What is bought?

With year-on-year inflation that exceeds 500%, according to the Venezuelan Finance Observatory, and an average basket of $510 dollars, according to private estimates, the bulk of public workers see life as uphill.

“What can you achieve that increase for? Not at all (…), who buys (a market) with 40 dollars?asks Johana Sánchez, 39, a merchant in one of the main markets in eastern Caracas.

Consumers agree. “Nothing, here there is only 33 dollars: a flour (corn), rice, oil, tuna, the essentials”says José Carreño, a 58-year-old upholsterer who supports his family of six and spends between $600 and $700 a month on food alone.

tax crisis

The last previous salary increase was made in March 2022. It was then equivalent to just under 30 dollars, but the Venezuelan currency has devalued 82% since then.

Vera maintains that the government’s decision to limit itself to adjusting bonds is due to the fact that “has a fiscal crisis on top”.

And corruption scandals at the state oil company PDVSA and other state companies, stresses the expert, increase discontent.

In fact, “this persecution against a clan that had been taking resources from PDVSA through these intermediaries (…) has to do with a genuine concern that resources are not coming in, there are no resources,” said Vera.

It is possible, he adds, that there is “fear” that a salary increase could generate inflationary pressures.

A “mockery”

The Venezuelan opponent Henrique Capriles described this Tuesday as “a mockery” to the workers the increase in bonuses announced on Monday by the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who decreed the increase in a food bonus, which went from US$ 1.8 to US$ 40, and another for “war”, equivalent to 30 dollars, for pensioners and other sectors.

“What they want to sell as great news is nothing more than a mockery and scam to the public workers and pensioners of our country”, Capriles said in a message on his Twitter account.

The anti-Chavista leader recalled that they are going “more than 400 days without increasing salary” minimum, raised, for the last time in March of last year, to 130 bolivars, an amount that due to inflation has been reduced to just over 5 dollars, and on which these approved bonds have no incidence.

In addition, he stressed that pensioners do not receive the food bonus that was increased, since it is only for active personnel, and that the so-called “war bond” Not all active employees perceive it.

“That ‘war bonus’, which not all workers receive, is no more than 1 dollar a day. 1 dollar a day! The oil income does allow a fair improvement, the fight for the claims continues until a decent income is achieved for the Venezuelan family”, Capriles asserted.

Earlier, President Maduro signed the decree to increase the two bonuses, announced yesterday for amounts of $40 and $20, and to which he added another $10 to reach a total of $70 in bonuses that will be indexed monthly to the official US dollar rate published by the Central Bank (BCV).

He explained that the “strategy” is “to increase” those bonuses to advance, in “the months to come”, and prepare for the moment in which the Government has “national income to deal a definitive blow in the recovery of wages and global income of workers”.

With information from AFP and EFE