The Establishment of “Social Enterprises” in Bolivia

By Richard Fidler

On October 7, President Evo Morales issued a government decree that allows
workers to establish “social enterprises” in businesses that are bankrupt,
winding up, or unjustifiably closed or abandoned.

These enterprises, while private, will be operated by the workers and qualify
for government assistance.

Morales issued Supreme Decree 1754 at a ceremony in the presidential palace
marking the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the Confederación General de
Trabajadores Fabriles de Bolivia (CGTFB – the General Confederation of
Industrial Workers of Bolivia). The Minister of Labour, Daniel Santalla, said
the decree was issued pursuant to article 54 of Bolivia’s new Constitution,
which states that workers
“in defense of their workplaces and protection of the social interest may, in
accordance with the law, reactivate and reorganize firms that are undergoing
bankrupty, creditor proceedings or liquidation, or closed or abandoned without
justification, and may form communitarian or social enterprises. The state will
contribute to the action of the workers.”

In his remarks to the audience of several hundred union members and leaders,
President Morales noted that employers often attempt to blackmail workers with
threats to shut down when faced with demands for higher wages. “Now, if they
threaten you in that way, the firm may as well go bankrupt or close, because you
will become the owners. They will be new social enterprises,” he said.

The Process Begins

Labour Minister Santalla noted that the constitutional article had already been
used to establish some firms, such as Enatex, Instrabol, and Traboltex, and that
more such firms could now be set up under the new decree.

Business spokesmen predictably warned that the new provisions would be a
disincentive to private investment and risk the viability of companies.

Santalla also said that firms that do not comply with their workforce
obligations under the law will lose preferential mechanisms to export their
products to state-managed markets. And he cited some recent cases in which the
government had intervened in defense of workers victimized for their attempts to
form unions. In one such case last month, Burger King, the company was fined
30,000 Bolivianos ($4,300 U.S.), ordered to reinstate the fired workers and to
recognize the union.

In the following article Alfredo Rada, Bolivia’s Deputy Minister of Coordination
with the Social Movements, draws attention to some important developments within
the country’s labour movement and suggests some means by which the unions can be
more effectively incorporated within the “process of change” being championed by
the government of the MAS-IPSP, the Movement for Socialism – Political
Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples. My translation from the Spanish.
•
Richard Fidler is an Ottawa member of the Socialist Project. This article first
appeared on his blog Life on the Left.

***

The Working Class and the Political Process in Bolivia

Alfredo Rada

Five months ago, I was in Tarija participating in a forum debating the political
process in Bolivia, a process we call the Democratic and Cultural Revolution.
One of those attending asked me whether it was possible to deepen this
revolution, to make it an economic and social revolution, without the
participation of the working-class. My immediate response was no, that to
consolidate a period of transition to the construction of a new form of
communitarian socialism it was absolutely necessary that the workers participate
within the revolutionary social bloc that has managed this process of
transformations starting in 2000 in the so-called water war, when the overthrow
of neoliberalism began.

It was a very relevant question since at that moment, in May of 2013, the
mobilizations over the Pensions Act called by the leadership of the Central
Obrera Boliviana (COB – Bolivian Workers Central) in opposition to the
government of Evo Morales were at their height.[1] Strongly influenced by
ultraleft political tendencies organized around the self-described “Partido de
los Trabajadores” [PT – Workers Party], the COB committed a monumental error in
mobilizing their ranks with fevered speeches calling for replacing Evo with
“another government,” as a leader of the urban teachers in Santa Cruz put it.
This maximalist orientation led the COB inexorably to defeat, since the strike
and the mobilizations never met with popular support and in the end the union
leadership had to retreat in virtual disarray. The diversion that led to the
defeat originated in the characterization that the ultraleft makes of the
present government as “bourgeois and pro-imperialist,” a simplistic deceit
peculiar to the political currents of an excessively classist and workerist
ideological mould that blocks them from understanding the varied nature of the
Bolivian social formation, which can only be analyzed in terms that combine
nation and class.

Communitarian Socialism

The present process of change is made up of a dynamic deployment of social class
struggles within capitalism that are combined, sometimes in a contradictory way,
with the historic struggle of the indigenous nations against the internal
capitalism. That is the dialectical nature of this process, in which the
anticapitalist and anticolonialist structural tendencies expressed in the
political action of exploited classes and oppressed nations make possible the
revolutionary transformation of the economic relations of exploitation, the
political relations of exclusion and the cultural relations of oppression. Yet
there is always the risk that this course of transformations, as a result of
external pressures, internal fragmentation or programmatic concessions, will
become exhausted or reversed.

Turning to the conflict with the COB, following its dénouement the government
set itself the task of rapidly mending its relationship with the working-class
sectors while at the same time the rank and file workers began to settle scores
with the ultraleft leaderships within the unions. That is what has just occurred
in the Sindicato Mixto de Trabajadores Mineros de Huanuni [Combined Union of the
Mining Workers in Huanuni], an emblematic organization because that district,
located in the western department of Oruro, has the largest proletarian
concentration in the entire country. Its 4,500 miners more than a year ago had
elected a union leadership radically opposed to the government. This leadership
led in the May strike, the blockade of roads in Caihuasi and the blowing up of a
bridge located in that locality. Today, weakened and isolated, that ultraleft
that was perched for some time in the Huanuni union has ended up being removed
by a mass general meeting of the workers, who also decided to approve the
construction of a new political pacto de unidad [unity agreement] with the
government of Evo Morales.

No doubt such repositioning within the workers’ movement will have a major
impact on the future of the PT since that political instrument has now lost its
backbone; the effects will also be felt in the orientation of the Federación
Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia [Federation of Mining Workers of
Bolivia] and in the COB itself.

Construction Workers

Let’s look at another industrial sector, that of the construction workers. This
is one of the fastest growing sources of employment owing to the expansion in
public and private investment in new building construction. Everywhere in
Bolivia’s cities you can see building and housing complexes under way, and with
them the hiring of many workers as casual or piecework labour. But the unions in
this sector are weak and dispersed, partly because their leadership tends to be
controlled by the big construction companies but also because of the sparse
regulation exercised by the state.

This submissiveness of the unions began to change at the most recent national
congress of the Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores en Construcción de
Bolivia [Bolivian Construction Workers Union Confederation], which met in the
city of Santa Cruz. The construction workers elected a new union leadership and
set their sights on the mandatory organizing of all the building workers,
teachers and assistants, replacing oral agreements with the bosses with
collective labour contracts in all construction projects. This will also be a
means of overcoming the situation of “informal workers” that is one of the worst
legacies of neoliberalism in a country in which less than 20 per cent of the
workers are unionized.

Manufacturing workers have been one of the hardest-hit sectors, decimated by the
massive layoffs euphemistically labelled “relocations” by Supreme Decree 21060
of August 1985. The manufacturing sector was subsequently subjected for almost
two decades to the labour flexibility policies of neoliberalism in order to
reduce payloads and increase the profits of capital.
Today the manufacturing sector is undergoing a rapid reorganizing of the unions
that has helped to strengthen the Confederación General de Trabajadores Fabriles
de Bolivia [General Confederation of Manufacturing Workers of Bolivia]. Yet to
be consolidated is the organization of new unions, particularly in the cities of
El Alto and Santa Cruz, the two major concentrations of industrial factories in
Bolivia.

The importance given to reincorporating workers in the process of
transformations around a common programmatic agenda with the Morales government
lies not only in the fact that it will help to bring together a strong labour
base of support, but also that it will strengthen the anti-imperialist and
revolutionary tendencies in the process. The programmatic agenda to which we
refer could address the following aspects: (1) a new General Labour Law which,
while preserving the advances already in the present law, will grant new rights
to the workers; (2) a natonal campaign of massive union organization in all
industries that are unorganized; and (3) the strengthening of the social and
communitarian sector of the economy, in alliance with the nationalized state
sector. •

Alfredo Rada is Bolivia’s Deputy Minister of Coordination with the Social
Movements. The original Spanish version of this article first published at
Rebelión.

Notes:
1. The COB demanded an increase in state pensions to 8,000 bolivianos ($1140)
annually for miners, and 5,000 bolivianos ($715) for other sectors. The
government offered 4,000 and 3,200 bolivianos respectively ($600/$470), saying
that any more would risk the financial sustainability of its pension scheme.
The conflict saw miners, teachers and health workers take to the streets of La
Paz, while roadblocks and strikes took place across the country. Police were
deployed to break up blockades in Cochabamba and La Paz, leading to several
arrests and injuries, while workers at the state-run Huanuni mine joined the La
Paz protests, paralysing tin production and costing several million dollars.
Other social sectors in Bolivia organized counter-marches in favour of the
government. Representatives of the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores
Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB), and the Confederación de Mujeres Campesinas y
Originarias Bartolina Sisa marched in La Paz to reject the blockades and
mobilisations organized by the COB, while coca workers also protested in favour
of the government in Cochabamba. At a rally in La Paz, Morales strongly
criticised the COB leaders, accusing them of being at the service of
imperialism, capitalism and neoliberalism.
After 16 days of protest, COB leaders agreed to lift the strike for 30 days to
allow time to analyse a government offer to reform the current pensions system.
Union leaders negotiated for several days in La Paz with officials from the
labour and finance ministries, during which the union lowered its demand on
pensions to 4,900 bolivianos for miners and 3,700 bolivianos ($700 and $530
respectively) for other sectors. It remains to be seen whether permanent
settlement can be reached. (Source: “Strikes and blockades organized by trade
unions in pension protest,” Bolivia Information Forum, News Briefing May-June
2013)

***
In
Globalresearch
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-establishment-of-social-enterprises-in-bolivia/5354700
October, 18, 2013