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JOSÉ GIL'S WALK ACROSS THE SHOP FLOOR WOULD APPEAR FAMILIAR TO TRADE UNIONISTS across the United States. As a local union official at the vast CVG Alcasa aluminum plant in Venezuela's Ciudad Guyana, he made the rounds on a short Sunday shift in August 2004-catching up on family news and listening to concerns and complaints, as molten metal pushed temperatures on an already scorching southcentral Venezuelan afternoon to skin-searing levels. The plants production was on the increase, thanks to Venezuela's booming oil economy and Chinese industry's demand for aluminum. Workers' expectations of their union were rising too; the union would soon launch a slowdown in a fight over pay.' A few months later, contract employees at the plant organized to demand equal pay for equal work.2
As one of the national coordinators for the labor central known as the National Union of Workers (Union Nacional de Trabajadores, or UNT) Gil provides a connection between the aluminum workers and the leadership of the fledgling labor central. The UNT seeks to displace the Confederation of Venezuelan Labor (CTV), historically the dominant union body in the country. It aims to undo decades of decline by organized labor: Gil estimated that real wages in his plant haven't risen in 18 years.
Even so, Gil's job has allowed him to buy a Ford F-150 pickup truck. He's also been able to purchase a new house, thanks to special loans available to employees of Alcasa and other companies in the industrial CVG state enterprises that dominate Ciudad Guyana. However, workers at CVG and other state enterprises have a standard of living that is increasingly removed from the majority of Venezuelan workers. Overall, real wages fell 23 percent during the 1990s as 60 percent of the population was forced to turn to the informal sector of the economy.3 Estimates put the poverty level as high as 80 percent.4
That division is palpable in Ciudad Guyana, where a wide river separates a planned city of big metalworking plants and comfortable homes from the impoverished barrios where Gil grew up. He's also a member of the Bolivarian Workers Force (Fuerza Bolivariana de Trabajadores, or FBT), which supports the "revolutionary process" of President Hugo Chávez and the government "missions" that have given the poor...