Video of the Venezuelan government approving the request of Kimberly-Clark workers to occupy the factory and resume production, using materials provided by the government. Story via Aporrea:
On Monday, the Venezuelan government ordered the occupation of the US company, Kimberly-Clark, following its announcement of the stoppage of production of personal hygiene items.
“We will proceed to sign the request the workers made of us, in which we plan the immediate occupation of the Kimberly-Clark of Venezuela facility on the part of the workers”, stated the minister of labor, Oswaldo Vera, at the company plant in Maracay, in the state of Aragua.
Vera warned other companies that they could do the same, asserting that “a company which is closed, is a company which will be occupied by its workers. We invite the workers to accompany us in activating the machinery.”
The US-based multinational announced the indefinite suspension of its operations in Venezuela on Saturday, alleging a “persistent deterioration in economic conditions”, inability to buy source materials, high inflation, and difficulties accessing foreign currency in the land.
The paralyzation of production by the company will affect the Venezuelan market, which is already suffering an acute shortage of personal hygiene products.
Translation mine.
So, it looks like the bullies of US industry won’t be shutting Venezuela down, as has clearly been their objective since the current round of economic warfare began. For all their moaning about the economic situation in Venezuela, it’s companies like these that are actually causing all the trouble. It’s not the Maduro government, and it’s not the workers. It’s the foreign corporations and their local lackeys in business and parliament who are the problem, and the common people of Venezuela, with their demands to occupy the factories (which the Maduro government approved, oh what tyrants!) who are fighting back.
Fun fact: This occupation follows an example that’s been prevalent in Argentina since the early 2000s. Only there, the government wasn’t helping the workers, since it was in the pockets of the international capital markets. It was up to the workers to collectivize and take up production themselves. And they did, as this little Canadian documentary makes clear:
And back then, Argentina didn’t yet have Venezuela there to bail it out and get it out of its creditors’ predatory clutches. Now Argentina is back in that hole, and no Chavecito to help…and Venezuela is teetering on the brink of the same. But one thing IS different in Venezuela: The government (NOT the National Assembly, which is dominated by right-wing assholes) is on the side of the workers, and approves of their plans to collectively take over the factories that foreign corporations seem determined to abandon. And it supports their initiative to do without those bosses, and get the country on its feet again. It’s even working hard to secure supplies so that those workers aren’t beholden to corporate foot-draggers.
Imagine that: a government that supports the grassroots, as well as vice versa! A government that approves workers’ initiatives, rather than stifling them on behalf of foreign capital and foreign corporate owners! Careful, media crapmeisters, don’t report that…because this is one good example that could seriously catch on.
Are you really that clueless? The plant shut down because they can’t get raw materials and they can’t get raw materials because of currency control. If you think it’s such a paradise you should move there.
Who the hell said anything about “paradise”? If you knew how to read English, never mind Spanish, which I’ve learned to read so I don’t have to rely on useless idiots who feed bullshit to the likes of even more useless idiotic you, you’d see that word appears nowhere in my piece. Go back and read it again, if you don’t believe me.
You right-wing morons really need to find a new tag line. “Move there, move there” — oh, how original and clever you are, telling me something I’ve heard a thousand times already. I get this same lame shit every time I drop some truth about a country you fucking idiots have no clues about yourselves and couldn’t care whether people there, people a lot more in touch with reality than you, live or die. I’d get more useful information out of bird droppings than I do from random Internet abusers, quite frankly.
Know what, Mikey? I’d move to Venezuela in a heartbeat if it got me the fuck away from people who think like YOU. Unfortunately, there are at least as many idiots there who don’t know how to parse what they read, either. They all went to expensive private church-run schools, and they all wish they could move to Florida, which is hell on Earth with all the face-eaters on bath salts and all the ground-standers who’ll shoot you for looking at ’em cross-eyed. AND they vote for the paid-off local bottom feeders who make this kind of shit happen there, too. They’re the reason the country is actually in such deep shit, and if you paid any real attention, you’d know that instead of trying to tell me, with zero marks for style or originality, how wrong you only think I am. (“Think” belongs in quotation marks, now that I think about it.)
I’d give you some free reading material, but I just know you’d never be able to grasp it, as you’re dumber than dogshit. Everyone who drives by here via rip-off monopoly Comcast and poops under throwaway burner addresses is. I’ve never seen a smart, articulate Comcast user yet.
And if you think life without currency controls is great, YOU try living under the punitive currency speculation the US routinely imposes on other countries to bring them to heel the way they’re trying to do in Venezuela. But I guess, since you live in affluent, white Lemont, Illinois, that point is moot, eh? I mean, you’ve got your Fed looking after you. That’s currency control, whether you realize it or not. It was actually instituted in direct response to the Great Depression and the currency panics on the market in those days. If you think life was better without it, and you think you’re smart enough to manage, then go build yourself a fucking time machine and move to the Dirty Thirties, and enjoy living life in a much worse place than today’s Venezuela.