Venezuelan Opposition Calls Oil, Teachers Strikes By REUTERS Filed at 5:08 p.m. ET
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Opposition-run unions began strikes on Wednesday for higher pay in Venezuela's vital oil industry and its state schools, heralding a wave of labor unrest for President Hugo Chavez's government.
With state electricity employees, steelworkers and the staff of the Caracas Metro also threatening action, the government promised a hard line against the strikers.
Interior Minister Luis Miquilena said a small group of ringleaders had manipulated wage grievances to win support in crucial union elections to be held this year.
``This is a vulgar provocation,'' Miquilena told reporters. ''It is an action by a small group of workers operating at the margin of the law. ... They do not deserve to sit at the negotiating table.''
Voters in a December referendum backed the populist Chavez's plan for elections to oust opposition union leaders.
The labor movement is one of Venezuela's last bastions of anti-Chavez power. During his two years as president, the former paratrooper has redrawn the South American nation's political map, rewriting the constitution and sweeping aside traditional political parties.
Around 60,000 petroleum workers lay down their tools early on Wednesday in the world's No. 3 petroleum exporter as oil union Fedepetrol flexed its muscles in a wage dispute.
REASSURANCE ON OUTPUT
While oil is vital for Venezuela's economic health, accounting for over half of government revenues and three-quarters of exports, state petroleum company PDVSA said it could maintain normal output for 10 days under a contingency plan.
The powerful oil union inflicted an embarrassing defeat on Chavez's government in October when it forced the state oil company to grant a 50 percent pay increase.
``As a government, we cannot permit what is obviously blackmail by the union sector, which is using these labor demands as a platform for the forthcoming union elections,'' said Elias Juau, minister of the Presidential Secretariat.
Also on Wednesday, roughly 160,000 teachers in the state education sector began a 72-hour strike, charging that a collective contract signed last year had been violated.
``This does not make us proud,'' said Jaime Manzo, president of the Venezuelan Teachers Federation. He said the strike would continue if the government did not meet teachers' demands.
Miquilena dismissed the teachers' action as ``an imaginary strike'' and said the vast majority of the 6.5 million children in state schools attended classes on Wednesday.
Authorities have not set a date for union elections this year, due within six months of December's referendum, amid confusion over the leadership of Chavez's Bolivarian Workers Movement.
Labor groups and human rights organizations said the referendum violated international labor rights and Venezuela's constitution.