RELEGITIMIZATION OF THE UNION MOVEMENT IN VENEZUELA

Abstract

This chapter addresses the political process of Venezuelan industrial relations and the consequences of this process for the worker’s movement. In the 1960s and 1970s, Venezuela was considered an emblem of political stability and consensus among the elite (Ellner, 1993, p. xvii). These were times of 90% electoral participation and growth of the labor movement. In the 1990s, however, signs of dissension among the elite and substantial growth of poverty began to appear, and the decade ended with the bloodiest popular explosion in the modern history of the country, known in Spanish as the “sacudón” or “caracazo.” This event left the country traumatized after witnessing exceptional violence toward public and private property by the poorest citizens, eventually leaving a balance of more than a thousand lives lost after the intervention of the army, called to quell the vandalism that had overflowed to civil and police forces.

Citation

Lucena, H. (2003), "RELEGITIMIZATION OF THE UNION MOVEMENT IN VENEZUELA", Cornfield, D.B. and Mccammon, H.J. (Ed.) Labor Revitalization: Global Perspectives and New Initiatives (Research in the Sociology of Work, Vol. 11), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 269-289. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-2833(03)11011-4