On Saturday, February 25, Venezuelan vice-president announced the dismissal of Elio Sayago, worker-president of the state-owned aluminum smelter ALCASA, and his replacement by Angel Marcano. This decision represents an assault of the bureaucracy within the Bolivarian revolution against workers' control and has caused outrage amongst revolutionary activists in Guayana and throughout Venezuela.
Elio Sayago, a long standing revolutionary activist, had been appointed as worker-president of ALCASA in May 2010, as part of a plan to introduce elements of workers' control and management in all the companies of the state-owned CVG complex of basic industries in the state of Guayana.
This was the second attempt to introduce workers' control in ALCASA. An earlier attempt led by Carlos Lanz, who had been appointed by president Chavez, was defeated due to a combination of bureaucratic pressures and sabotage and also mistakes made in the way the experience was run.
The different companies which make up CVG Guayana (Venalum, Sidor, ALCASA, etc) had become a battle field between revolution and bureaucracy. Those groups of revolutionary activists advocating workers' control and management were facing a powerful network of interests linking up the right wing of the Bolivarian movement, bureaucratic "Bolivarian" trade union leaders, opposition-aligned adeco trade unionists, private businesses and multinationals as we described in detail in July last year (see Workers' control vs bureaucrats, Mafia and multinationals in Bolivar).
In an interview with the Marxist paper Lucha de Clases, Elio Sayago explained the conspiracy against workers' control at ALCASA, and warned how this had the support of elements right at the top of the state bureaucracy and the national government (see: Workers’ Control, Challenges and the Revolutionary Government: An Interview with Elio Sayago, President of CVG Alcasa)
An article in Venezuelanalysis describes how "on hearing the news, workers quickly organised in defence of their president, calling an assembly at the factory and issuing a statement strongly rejecting the government’s “disastrous” decision."
The Coordination of groups and nucleous of peoples' power in Guayana, representing a wide range of left wing, rank and file, Bolivarian revolutionary organisations has issued a call "to struggle to defeat this strategy which goes against the interests of workers and of the Bolivarian revolution led by president Chavez".
Elio Sayago rejected the dismissal, as he explained that he had not been officially notified, and had only found out about it on the TV news. “It is my responsibility to alert you all that this is not a person taking control in Alcasa, but rather a political and economic group... a group that for practically two years has tried to obstruct efforts to consolidate workers’ control, they used violence and sowed terror in the industry,” explained Sayago.
It is not by chance that this decision has been taken just as president Chavez, who appointed Elio Sayago as worker-president of ALCASA, had left the country for Cuba for medical reasons.
Once again, the only way to defend the revolution is for the workers to take power and defeat the "Bolivarian" bureaucracy which is nothing more than the fifth column of the capitalists and imperialists within the revolutionary movement.