It is part of the culture in Venezuela, as well as in many other countries of the Region, that, at Christmas, they pay Christmas bonuses to active workers in the public administration. It has been customary for this "gift" to be extended to public sector retirees and also to pensioners registered with the Venezuelan Social Security Institute. For their part, those who work in the private sector of the economy also receive a year-end bonus in addition to the “sharing” of profits. This year, the "gift" came short.
The salary earned by the worker is the calculation basis for these “gifts” and, the legal minimum salary decreed by the National Executive is key to the extent that it constitutes the floor from which the rest of the salaries are recalculated both from the public administration and the private sector.
In the context of the hyperinflation induced by North American imperialism, the variation in prices already reaches 60.000 million percent between 2013 and 2020, while the legal minimum wage has only increased 5.000 million percent during the same period, which is It has reflected not only in a deterioration of the purchasing power and of the living conditions of the working people that we are 95% of the employed population, but also in the deterioration of public spending and in the fall of the national production. For its part, the lag in the legal minimum wage and with it the rest of the salary scales has impacted other rights of workers and pensioners.
The 1999 constituent was very clear: in the first place, it indexed the legal minimum wage to the price variations of the basic food basket. In article 91 it established "The State shall guarantee workers in the public and private sectors a minimum living wage that will be adjusted each year, taking as one of the references the cost of the basic food basket." It is clear that, in the midst of the economic war, the attack on the bolivar and therefore the price variations, are not annual but twice a day, which is why such adjustment / indexation of the minimum living wage should be carried out with more frequency.
The gap between the price of the basic food basket and the minimum living wage is abysmal, we estimate the former at 1.920 Bs (384 US $) while the minimum wage is 7 Bs (1,5 US $) or 274 times.
Second, the Constituent Assembly in Article 80 established that "pensions and retirements granted through the Social Security system may not be less than the urban minimum wage." Therefore, if the minimum wage lagged behind the basic food basket, the monthly pension of five million older adults also lagged.
Third, the salary earned by the worker is also the calculation basis for the payment of social benefits in the event that the worker ceases to function. In this regard, article 122 of the Organic Labor Law establishes: “The base salary for the calculation of what corresponds to the worker for social benefits, and compensation for termination of the employment relationship, will be the last salary earned, calculated in such a way as to integrate all the salary concepts received by the worker. "
The minimum wage, as established by the Constitution, is just that, the minimum, so that, in this capitalist system, those of us who sell our labor power can guarantee ourselves the basics to survive and reproduce as a class. This does not mean, of course, that it cannot and, above all, must be greater depending on the true value that we as workers add in the production process so that the exploitation is less.
In the private sector, the average income of workers is higher than that of the public administration, although it is still well below the price of the basic food basket. Private pollsters affirm that it is around 500 Bs. A good part of that income is bonuses and not salary, so they have no impact on labor liabilities to the detriment of workers' rights, read social benefits, end of year bonus and "distribution" of profits.
Continuing with the importance of the salary due to its incidence in the rest of the labor rights, fourthly, this is also the calculation basis for the so-called Christmas bonuses / end-of-year bonus and the “distribution” of the profits according to the article 131 of the Organic Labor Law and article 25 of the Law of the Civil Service Statute.
They sell us the Christmas bonuses and the supposed distribution of the profits established in article 131 as a favor that the owner of the capital does us, almost a gift in which they are graciously giving us part of their profits. The matter is the other way around, what the bourgeois really does is return to the worker a part, very small, by the way, of which he previously appropriated in the social process of production by not paying him what effectively corresponds to the value of their strength of labor.
Let us remember that the profit comes from the value of the labor power that was not paid to the worker; this is the capital-labor contradiction. For the calculation of said "distribution of profits", the Law establishes that the bourgeois will distribute 15% (already low) of their earnings among the workers, however, in the same article and contradictorily, it establishes a limit of 4 months of wages for said distribution. It is the case that there are so many, but so many, the profits of the bourgeoisie in this country, that those 4 months do not even correspond to 8% of the profits of the bourgeoisie, less now that the salary is tending to zero.
We have been proposing that, while progressing towards a socialist production system, article 131 of the Organic Labor Law be amended: the 4-month limit be eliminated and the profits that must be distributed to workers be taken to 85%. . Seen in another way, that would imply that every year the salaried class give away 15% of the value of our labor power to the owners of capital and not 92%.
Thus, the Christmas “gift” this year for pensioners was 7 Bs (1,4 US $), that of a professor at public universities, 150 Bs (30 US $) as well as that of a doctor who works in the public health system. Those who earn the minimum wage received a bonus equivalent to 21 Bs (4,2 US $).
We insist on the importance of salary and its incidence. In a capitalist system, this depends not only on the good living of the workers and the empowerment of the working class, but, in contrast, the profit levels of the bourgeoisie. It is a matter of redistribution of production and power: the lower the salary, the higher the profit.
