Note - I couldn’t find anything on the “United Federation of Workers of Venezuela” (maybe because it’s a wrong translation?) but here’s some background I’ve managed on find on the author. Pedro Eusse, per this article is a member of the PCV (Communist Part of Venezuela). At the bottom of the OG article, it says the original (untranslated) was in Tribuna Popular, which is the press of the PCV. So that’s additional proof. The PCV supported Chavez throughout and Maduro originally, but stopped in 2020 because of difference in economic policies. Since then it seems the rift has widened.

Per the article (no idea what’s true and what’s not, I’ve edited it to make the points more organized for me and remove the more charged/emotional language) -

In 2023, the government consolidated the policy of labour deregulation initiated in 2018.

It has “destroyed” the minimum wage. November 2023’s annualized inflation was 359%, double that of November 2022. But the national minimum wage has been frozen for 18 months at 130 Bs, less than $4/month, making “the Venezuelan labour force the most devalued in the world.”

93% of the minimum income is based on bonuses rather than actual wages. The majority of workers and families have to survive on these bonuses and food bags. The majority are forced to perform numerous formal and informal jobs to subsist. The result is deteriorating health, and more time away from family care and the fulfillment of social, cultural and organizational activities.

The government has worked to prevent the eventual workers’ and popular protests in the face of the social catastrophe due to its neoliberal policies, by violating - freedom of association, the right to strike, workplace health and safety regulations which cause fatal work accidents.

The National Budget Law of 2024 prioritises capital and the current government with an unequal distribution of national income. There are no budgetary provisions to establish decent salaries and pensions, but only to continue granting bonuses – obviously with no impact on social benefits, vacations, profits, Christmas bonuses and other legal and contractual indemnities.

The government has dismantled of collective bargaining agreements, via the criminalization of workers’ struggles, open layoffs and sham dismissals. All of it occurs with official acceptance (especially against militant union leaders and safety representatives), employer and government coercion to subdue the individual and collective will of the workers, and the use of judicial power to legitimize abusive and anti-democratic political decisions.

2023 began with months of massive protests by teachers and other primary and basic education workers – demanding, unsuccessfully, the signing of the teachers’ collective bargaining agreement – and is concluding with some scattered labour protests demanding the full payment of year-end bonuses from public employers.

2024 will also see labour protests, considering the serious deterioration of the subsistence-level material conditions of those who depend on a salary or a pension.

We have to broaden struggle of the working class and put aside everything that dismantles unions, the retirees and pensioners associations. In 2024, the efforts of the government and the right-wing opposition to manipulate working people and their organizations will be intensified. Thus we must strengthen the independence and autonomy of the labour forces that fight to recover our human, social and labour rights and to defeat policies that only serve capital and that debase the working class.