http://www.reuters.
Venezuela's Chavez puts communist as labor minister Wed Apr 16, 2008
1:25pm EDT
CARACAS, April 16 (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez named
a veteran communist leader as labor minister on Wednesday, days after
ordering the nationalization of a giant steelmaker whose workers are
fighting for better pay.
The first task facing Roberto Hernandez, a long-term member of the
Venezuelan Communist Party, will be to negotiate a new labor contract
with the union at the Ternium Sidor steel works.
The appointment was published in the government's official gazette.
Hernandez replaces former minister Jose Rivero, who was criticized for
failing to resolve a fierce labor dispute that caused months of
sporadic strikes and bloody clashes between workers and police.
Chavez ordered the take-over of Ternium Sidor after the company
refused to raise a pay offer to workers.
Chavez has spent billions of dollars reversing most of the
privatization of Venezuelan industries that took place in the 1990s.
The government now controls most of the energy, minerals and telecoms
sectors.
Ternium Sidor is a giant steel plant on the banks of the Orinoco river
in eastern Venezuela that was privatized in 1997. It employs as many
as 14,000 workers, but only about 5,000 are unionized.
The union is divided between groups who support the government and
others who oppose it and has blocked some steel exports since the
nationalization announcement.
The plant's parent company Ternium (TX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is
Argentine controlled. Investment bank UBS estimates that the
Venezuelan operation is worth about $3 billion.
News of the nationalization has been welcomed by communist parties and
left-wing union federations in Latin America.
Hernandez recently left the communist party to help found Chavez's
United Socialist Party, or PSUV.
(Reporting by Fabian Andres Cambero, writing by Frank Jack Daniel,
editing by Vicki Allen)
© Thomson Reuters 2008.
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