Venezuelan workers protested against low wages

At the cry of "just wages already", hundreds of officials demonstrated Wednesday in Caracas to claim better wages, because the current almost do not give to buy a kilo of onions for unbridled inflation.

Guarded by dozens of police and armed forces, some 600 protesters gathered in a square in the center of the capital to denounce what they called their "starvation wage" and the collapse of state-owned companies for lack of investments.

"We are starving, I win 1,800 bolivars that do not reach me at all," Fidel Villarroel, a technician with Cantv Telecommunications, told AFP.

With 39 years of service, his monthly salary is equivalent to $ 4.8 at the black market rate, the dominant marker because of the shortage of currency monopolized by the socialist government.

President Nicolás Maduro put this remuneration into effect in September, after a currency conversion eliminating five zeros from the devalued bolívar. Then it was $ 30.

Salaries in Venezuela are devoured by inflation which, according to the IMF, will close this year to 1,350,000% and increase to 10,000,000 in 2019.

The high cost of living – with several products whose prices are higher than those of neighboring countries – is one of the most dramatic aspects of the Venezuelan crisis, with five years of recession and shortage of food and medicine.

The protest went off without incident, a man having invited the police and the army to "join the fight" through a megaphone. "You do not reach the true (money)!", He harangued before the intrepid gaze of the uniform.

The protesters also demand the return of the collective contracts, which have several advantages, as well as the updating of the salary scales.

According to the workers, these agreements were left unresolved when the salary of 1,800 Bolivars of the majority of 2.8 million civil servants came into effect.

"It's a Cuban plan for us to all win the same fate," Luis Hernández, representative of the vital oil industry union, told AFP, representing 96 percent of import-dependent revenues.

Hernandez will retire in two years. He is in a hurry to do it with a salary that is now only reached for a little more than a kilogram of meat. In 2015, the national oil company PDVSA earned $ 680.

"After 28 years of service, it's not fair," said the man, who this year received the equivalent of $ 70 in profits. Previously, with this benefit, I changed cars every two years, he says.

Close to him, a graffiti reads: "Down with the Maduro anti-worker package", in reference to the measures that the government put in place late August to deal with the worst crisis in history of this once rich oil country.

Economists believe that Maduro, a former trade unionist who defines himself as a "hard-working president", will soon raise the minimum wage. But they insist that readjustments are far from the solution.

As long as the government maintains its intervention model of the economy, it will continue to widen the fiscal gap and persist in the collapse of oil production, which fell from 3.2 million barrels per day to 1.1 million in the last decade, according to the report. OPEC.

"They can increase the minimum wage nominally as much as they want, without changing the model, without increasing the productivity of production, it is impossible to gain purchasing power," said Henkel García, Econometrica consulting firm.

According to the trade unionist of the oil sector, on a payroll of 157,000 workers, PDVSA now has 57,000 assets, in addition to a "parallel payroll" of 35,000 people who does not contribute to production.

"Workers are leaving us in other countries," Hernández said, citing the exodus of Venezuelans due to the crisis: about 2.3 million since 2015, according to the UN.

The leader estimates that the recovery of the oil industry will require about $ 28 billion over the next four years, in a country with international reserves of only $ 8 billion.

During the event, companies such as Cantv, the Caracas metro and the electricity sector were reported in a precarious situation.

"Cantv's quality of service is deplorable – I do not even have the guts to do my job," Villarroel said.