Without any doubt, today will be an unforgettable day for the brand-new INVEVAL (ex-CNV) workers. It was a day that started very early when the workers and their guests gathered at the factory awaiting the buses which would take us to the Miraflores Palace. As we waited we joked and drank coffee.
Later, with this happy and fraternal mood, we embarked on the two-hour journey to the headquarters of the national government. We had to wait for another two hours before meeting President Hugo Chávez, first in the queue outside to get into the Ayacucho Hall and then in the Hall itself.
To think that in that same place, just three years ago, the fascist oligarchy had celebrated its ephemeral victory over the people and today the people, represented by their workers’ vanguard, filled the place with their unmitigated joy, was more than enough to give goose pimples even to the toughest of guys.
A video on the more than 26 months long struggle of the CNV workers to defend their rights was shown before the reading of the decree of expropriation of the company by President Chávez. It was not a rushed, but a didactic reading, in the style of the President, enquiring about, analysing and explaining every single one of the words and phrases in the document, to make sure that there would be no doubts over what was being carried out.
Comrades Jorge Paredes, Antonio Betancourt and José Gregorio Quintero answered in a clear and precise manner every question raised by the President and they also explained the meaning of this long and victorious struggle. The crucial moment came – and it could not be otherwise – when the President signed the decree of expropriation which gives 51 percent of the shares of the company to the state and the remaining 49 percent to the cooperative formed by the workers, who, from now on, will be in charge of its administration under its new name of INVEVAL (Venezuelan Valves Industry). Later the Minister of Labour, Maria Cristina Iglesias, was to receive the order to carry out the decree, and the National Guard, from then on, was to protect the factory.
After the event, the return journey to the factory took place in an atmosphere of even greater emotion than the outward journey. This was logical, as the sweet taste of this first and great victory for which the workers had so long struggled for bitterly and consciously, permeated all the senses of the workers and refused to dissipate. Eventually, all the accumulated emotions of the last few weeks could no longer be held back and, as the bus approached Carrizal (the town where the factory is situated) people burst out shouting – more than chanting – many slogans that expressed anger, joy, emotion, some with tears welling up in their eyes, with the feeling that justice had started to be implemented.
Those of us who met the ex-CNV workers in 2003, when they had started on this long path of struggle for workers’ rights – which were being trampled underfoot by an oligarch and pro-coup employer – saw them as a group of naïve people who felt betrayed by the boss. But they soon realised how inexperienced they were in the field of struggle which they had been pushed into, a struggle which most of the time they had to carry out on their own, without a trade union, without financial resources, and only with their tenacity and determination.
Later, in 2004, we saw them again battling amid desertions and the impunity of the factory owner who the justice system always seemed to leave untouched. They were alone (apart from some exceptions which, nearly always, came from the working class layers), but they persevered in spite of everything.
In December of last year this unequal combat seemed to be reaching an end when the large majority of workers were forced by economic pressures to abandon the factory. The owner took advantage of this to remove many parts that were being stored at the factory. This criminal act, together with the victory of the VENEPAL workers, gave new energy to the CNV workers who reoccupied the factory on 17 February.
However, now something had changed. There was very little left of those naïve workers, who back in May 2003 were demanding respect for their labour rights and who easily fell into the trap set by the boss and the bureaucrats. Two years of struggle had given these men and women a high degree of consciousness and, as a result, the slogans were no longer the same.
Now the ownership of the means of production, where great wealth had been generated for a parasitic oligarch, was being questioned. Now they were demanding that this production unit should be passed to their rightful owners: the workers. That objective was achieved today.
This is a first step, an important step. But now the workers of the new INVEVAL are facing another challenge. They must become a source of inspiration to other workers and demonstrate something (that we are sure they will demonstrate): that the workers are much better administrators of their factories than the capitalist bosses. And, with all this, to start building that socialism of the 21st century of which is so much talked about.