How's this for a Labor Law?

[Catherina]

While the US has been regressing by leaps and bounds this last decade, Venezuela has been protecting workers rights. No wonder the neoliberals are so eager to get their puppet Capriles in there.



Fact Sheet:
Venezuela’s New Labour Law 2012

...

This new law replaces the former labour law, passed in 1997 by President Rafael Caldera under pressure from the IMF. The so-called “Caldera Law” removed legal requirements from employers such as severance pay and compensation for unfair dismissal.

The new law will also build on the current rights established in the 1999 constitution. As a result of these constitutional rights, there has been a dramatic increase in the proportion of the work force engaging trade union activity. Before President Chavez’s election in 1998 trade union membership figures stood at 11%. Now, over 28% of the workforce is unionised.

Workers rights
 Free access to justice/legal services
 All workers have the right to social security, including housewives (and the recognition of the economic value of domestic work)
 Exploitative private subcontracting is abolished.
 Right to strike 120 hours after presenting a list of demands.

Gender equality
 The state has the responsibility to guarantee gender equality in all aspects of work and employers are responsible for encouraging and promoting the equal participation of women in managerial and director level roles.

Maternity and paternity leave
 Maternity leave increased to 6.5 months.
 It is made illegal to submit women to medical exams and pregnancy tests
 Suitable working conditions must be found for pregnant women.
 Protected job security from the start of the pregnancy right up to 2 years after giving birth.
 14 consecutive days leave for fathers from birth and 2 years job security
 Women who adopt a child under 3 years old will receive 26 weeks leave.
 Employers with over 20 employees must provide crèche for children between 3 months and 6 years old and a room for breastfeeding
 Permanent job security for the parents of disabled and gravely ill children.

Anti-discrimination
 All discrimination on the grounds of age, race, sex, socio-economic background, creed, marital status, trade unionism, religion, politics, nationality, sexual orientation, disability, etc is prohibited.
 State must promote and support employment of disabled people. Employers must employ 5% disabled workforce.
 Workers cannot be discriminated against in their right to work on the basis of having a criminal record.
 Workers cannot be discriminated against on the basis of trade union affiliation.

Protection of children and minors
 Children under the age of 14 cannot work except in artistic and cultural areas.

Working hours
 Night workers have a right to 30% extra salary than day workers.
 At least 50% extra for extra hours worked (time and a half).
 Paid bank holidays and 50% extra if work these days (time and a half).
 Workers should not work over 5 hours continuously without a break of at least 1 hour a day.
 Workers should not work more than 5 days a week with 2 days continuous rest (paid) a week.
 No more than 8 hours a day - 40 hour week.
 If on night work - 7 hours a day, 35 a week.

Salary and holiday entitlement
 Christmas bonus for all workers, equal to one month’s pay minimum, due in the first 15 days of December.
 15 days holiday entitlement after 1 year and a holiday bonus of at least 15 day’s pay and 1 more day for each year worked up to a total of 30 days.

Decent working conditions
Employer must guarantee and safeguard the following:
 Physical, intellectual and moral development
 Exchange of knowledge and training at work
 Time for rest and recreation
 Healthy work environment
 Protection of life, health and safety at work
 Prevention of sexual and other harassment
 Free transport provided if live over 30km from workplace

http://www.embavenez-uk.org/pdf/labour_law2012.pdf




Severance:

- 30 days for each year of service, based on final salary per year,

- If employment was less than three months, severance is calculated at five days of salary per month of employment.


Vacations, year-end bonuses and other employment benefits

- vacation bonus is increased from 7 to 15 days of salary after the first year of employment plus an escalating factor of one additional day of salary per year up to a total of 30 days of salary.

- The minimum payment for yearend bonuses is increased from 15 to 30 days of salary

- suspension due to injuries or sickness- the employer is required to pay the difference of the salary that is not guaranteed by the Social Security Institute.

- prohibits outsourcing. (The law requires that those outsourced employees be transferred to the beneficiary company within 3 years from the passing and publication of the law. During the process of transferring the outsourced employees, these employees are protected against termination and shall keep the same employment benefits and conditions.


3. Workday

-work week is reduced from 44 to 40 hours a week.




The last 3 points taken from here http://www.mondaq.com/x/177808/Employee+Rights/Highlights+Of+The+New+Venezuelan+Labor+Law

[Hayabusa]

1. Can someone submit that bill here?

Wow, that's an awesome work law.

[Catherina]

6. I wish someone would but we need new leadership in our labor organizations

because the heads of our labor unions aren't on the workers' side. Not in Venezuela, not here.

WEEKEND EDITION DECEMBER 9-11, 2011

The Corrupting Influence of the NED
The AFL-CIO’s Covert Ops in Venezuela
by ALBERTO C. RUIZ

In 2002, the AFL-CIO’s international arm known as the “Solidarity Center” was greatly embarrassed when it came to light that it had been supporting actors in Venezuela participated in the short-lived coup against President Hugo Chavez. As a number of authors and publications noted at the time, the Solidarity Center, with money donated from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), gave support to the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (“CTV”) which in turn was instrumental in the coup against Chavez which, as the reader may call, involved the kidnapping of Hugo Chavez.

For example, the New York Times explained in an article entitled, “U.S. Bankrolling Is Under Scrutiny for Ties to Chavez Ouster,” that” of particular concern is $154,377 given by the endowment to the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, the international arm of the AFL-CIO, to assist the main Venezuelan labor union in advancing labor rights.” As the Times noted, “The Venezuelan union, the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, led the work stoppages that galvanized the opposition to Mr. Chavez. The union’s leader, Carlos Ortega, worked closely with Pedro Carmona Estanga, the businessman who briefly took over from Mr. Chavez, in challenging the government.”

And what’s more, it turns out that the Solidarity Center played a critical role, just before the coup, in bringing the CTV together with FEDECAMARAS (the Venezuelan chamber of commerce). This is important because the CTV and FEDECAMARAS went on to plan and carry out the coup together. However, quite curiously, the Solidarity Center did not stick around long enough to see how the coup ended up. This is because it moved its office (which is in charge of the entire Andean Region) from Caracas, Venezuela to Bogota, Colombia just three weeks before the coup took place.

The Solidarity Center attempted to defend itself against charges that it was up to its old Cold War tricks of working with the U.S. government to overthrow progressive, nationalist governments in the Third World – e.g., in the overthrow of Allende in Chile and Arbenz in Guatemala – by denying that the CTV, which it supported up to and indeed through the time of the coup, had anything to do with the coup. As the Boston Globe later noted in an article entitled, “US Tax Dollars Helped Finance Some Chavez Foes, Review Finds,” this denial had a hollow ring to it in light of the fact that “the Venezuelan media broadcast a recorded telephone conversation between (exiled former president Carlos Andres) Perez and Carlos Ortega, president of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers [CTV], in which the pair plotted against Chavez.” In the end, the AFL-CIO later privately conceded that the CTV leadership did actively participate in the coup against Chavez. The same Boston Globe story concluded that the Solidarity Center’s other defense – that it was merely helping the CTV with matters of internal democratization – were also proven to be false.

...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/09/the-afl-cio%E2%80%99s-covert-ops-in-venezuela/

The AFL-CIO’s role in the Venezuelan coup
By Bill Vann
3 May 2002

An agency directed by the AFL-CIO trade union federation played a key role in funding and advising those who organized the recent abortive military coup attempt in Venezuela. The AFL-CIO’s role in the US-backed plot underscores the fact that even as the union apparatus becomes increasingly irrelevant as a significant factor in American politics and the lives of US workers, it continues to conspire against the democratic rights and class interests of workers internationally.

The revelations of AFL-CIO involvement concern the role in Venezuela of the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), an AFL-CIO-run agency that is largely funded by the US government.

...

What is the ACILS?

Previously, the AFL-CIO carried out its operations in Latin America through an outfit known as the American Institute for Free Labor Development, or AIFLD. Through decades of collaboration with the US government, AIFLD became internationally known as the CIA’s “labor front,” dedicated to subverting independent militant unions and provoking “labor” unrest against governments targeted by Washington.

...

The ACILS still receives the lion’s share of its funding from government sources, to the tune of roughly $15 million a year. This includes a $45 million, five-year grant from the Agency for International Development, $4 million from the NED, $1 million over two years from the State Department and $300,000 from the Labor Department. The AFL-CIO itself chips in another $1 million a year.

...

The sordid episode in Venezuela makes clear that the AFL-CIO continues its counterrevolutionary services to the US government abroad, even as it oversees an endless series of betrayals, defeats, concessions and layoffs for unionized workers at home.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/05/vene-m03.html

[patrice]

2. Soc Sec & Health Care should be managed like utilities of the same sort that property taxes pay for.

[RoccoR5955]

3. But isn't Venezuela Communist?

[Starry Messenger]

4. Some people really don't like the idea of a government run for or by working people.

[DiverDave]

5. Were's the PROFIT in that?

It's all about the bottom line, dont ya know?

[Catherina]

7. Profit is fast becoming my most hated word in the English language

When are we going to wake up from this madness that supports profits over people?

[LWolf]

15. +1

[Donald Ian Rankin]

8. Some sensible and some silly rules.

:-6.5 months maternity leave but only 14 days paternity is a recipe for discrimination against women in the workplace. It's much harder to compel companies to comply with anti-discrimination laws when discriminating is blatantly in their interests.

:-Requiring all employers to provide a creche is daft - in some places it's sensible to do so, in many it isn't.

:-Legally-enforced job security, which a lot of these rely on, strikes me as an insane idea - so insane that my guess is that the actual laws say, and that my objection is to the summarisation rather than the law. Telling employers that they can't fire people no matter what - even if they never turn up to work again - is just nuts.

:- A lot of these strike me as not daft, but overly restrictive. That said, since Venezuela's economy runs on oil rather than business or investment, they may be OK til it runs out. The goal of redistributing wealth is laudable, but I suspect you can achieve far better alleviation of poverty by letting people run their businesses as they see fit, and taxing the result.

[Catherina]

12. I don't understand your criticisms

maternity leave. Are you advocating that fathers should also get 6 months? I'd have no problem with that however the birth mother is the one breastfeeding.

The US is totally behind in this regard. Malaysia has creches in government buildings. Silicon Valley firms have creches in their buildings for nursing mothers. The last two companies I worked for in Silicon Valley gave new mothers 6 months off and it's seen as a very fair deal and no men ever complained that it was discriminatory. Any firm that employs nursing mothers should have one imo. I can't imagine a single place where young mothers work where it wouldn't be a sensible idea to have one. The US model of letting CEOs build private creches next to their office while saying "to hell with the other nursing mothers" sucks.


"Telling employers that they can't fire people no matter what - even if they never turn up to work again" Where did you see that?

"you can achieve far better alleviation of poverty by letting people run their businesses as they see fit, and taxing the result." Like we do in the US? In the UK? Our economies have crumbled and poverty is accelerating. That model doesn't work. Letting employers run their business is they see fit is part of what got us into the mess we're in. That's the model where it all trickles down right?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

14. I'd advocate transferable parental leave.

I'd allocate somewhere between 4 and 12 months per baby, depending on economic conditions (more in boom, less in recession, seldom anywhere near either of those extremes but I don't want to bother thinking of more realistic bounds so I'm bracketting), of which the father got first refusal on a small amount (a week to a month) and the mother got first refusal on the rest.

Silicon valley firms are mostly large. A firm with 20 employees will often have zero or one people who would use a creche if it were provided, and seldom enough to make it sensible.

I saw "job security" repeatedly, in one case for life.

You can't use the the US as a model of what happens when you tax wealth, because it doesn't.

[SamKnause]

9. Hugo Chavez and labor laws

One of the many humane and wonderful things he did to help the majority of people in Venezuela.

Thanks for posting the info.

I bookmarked the article about the labor laws when I read about it last year.

I had not seen the video. I REALLY enjoyed it !!!!

Thanks

[Catherina]

10. Thank you Sam

This one is relevant for this thread too. I hope you enjoy it as much even if it's in French but there are subtitles

Oh, one more. Sorry, I can't resist

[SamKnause]

13. Thanks

Catherina I enjoyed both of those immensely.

Thank you.


Have a wonderful evening.

[Kingofalldems]

11. Yeah but rich people might not like it.