International campaign against harassment and criminalization of workers' struggles by the transnational Masisa in Venezuela

ByUnited Socialist Venezuela

United Socialist (MS), section of the International Socialist League in Venezuela, denounces and states that it is undertaking a national and international campaign in response to the situation faced by Jean Mendoza, worker at the Chilean transnational Masisa and labor leader, member of this organization, who is being a victim of judicial-police harassment and harassment promoted by this company with the collaboration of complacent pieces within certain institutions.

This employer action seeks to criminalize the labor claims of which our colleague Jean Mendoza has been an important part., together with his colleagues who work at the Chilean transnational, with the purpose of achieving his imprisonment, in order to silence his voice and separate him from the labor-union struggle. Mendoza is being accused of “instigation of hatred” and “simulation of a punishable act” for pointing out the violations of labor rights committed by the company..

The activities carried out by the leader Jean Mendoza and his co-workers, have consisted of expressing before the company and publicly, and even before the courts, their defensive demands and just demands of the working class of Masisa, in the face of the violation of the collective bargaining agreement and business practices characterized by the use of mechanisms contrary to the Labor Law and violating labor and constitutional rights, as well as the salary conditions to which they are subjected.

The business offensive is due to the fact that Jean Mendoza is a supportive worker with firm class consciousness., that has promoted legal lawsuits against the systematic abuses of the transnational, and constructively supports the unity and mobilization of the workers of Guyana. They want to neutralize and punish him for raising his voice on behalf of the workers, for a decent standard of living and for union and organizational freedoms of the working class. They want to subdue him and remove him from the stage for facing the hard blow that means the de facto elimination of salary and work benefits, of decent employment, while the transnational exponentially increases its profit levels at the expense of appropriating the value of the work of the working class.

This retaliation is not only a product of the complicity and connivance of businessmen and institutional mercenaries.. This anti-worker action is the product of a policy directed against the working class and that uses, among other tools, of the decree issued by the government of Nicolás Maduro known as the Memorandum 2792, that gives the prerogatives to private businessmen to carry out the superexploitation of workers and skip achievements previously achieved, with salaries and hunger bonuses that do not cover even a tenth of the food basket, much less the basics. (violating the Art 91 constitutional). In addition to leaving all the freedom to the employers to act against the working masses and the leaders, as they also do in state companies, with the result that today the government and businessmen keep hundreds of workers blackmailed, prosecuted and imprisoned.

Faced with this new attack by private employers, supported and accompanied by the anti-worker policy of the Maduro government, is that from Marea Socialista we are promoting a petition for signatures in support of Jean Mendoza, to avoid at all costs that he is imprisoned and his human rights violated, as we have been doing with workers who are imprisoned or under such threat, simply by demanding the most basic rights and carrying out labor struggles. For these reasons, imprisonment is applied in Venezuela today., procedural delay, judicial blackmail, police harassment and all kinds of ignorance of our rights.

That is why we declare ourselves once again in a permanent national and international campaign, as we have been doing with imprisoned workers, this time in defense of our colleague Jean Mendoza, in continuity with our actions to confront the repression implemented with the criminalization of the struggles, that is carried out with the “legal” instruments devised in the government, in the recent ANC and in the current AN, with approval of the PSUV and its allies: This is the case of the disgraceful “Law Against Instigation of Hate”, the aforementioned Memorandum 2792 and the so-called “Anti-Blockade Law”. For the international campaign we will have the support of social and political leaders of sister parties from around the world., grouped in the International Socialist League (lis-isl).

We strongly reject this new attack directed against the struggle of the workers!!

Jean Mendoza we are all!

No to the criminalization of the fight for wages and labor rights!

Enough of repression of workers!!

Active class solidarity!

In this link you can sign online and we ask that your signature send it to the following emailzuleikamatamoros@gmail.com after you adhere to this link or in case you cannot access it.
https://secure.avaaz.org/community_petitions/en/marea_socialista_repudio_al_acoso_y_criminalizacion_a_trabajadores_por_parte_de_la_transnacional_masisa/?