The Venezuelan Observatory on Trade Union Freedom (OVLIS) is a recently launched initiative by a team of professors who have been working with the trade union movement as part of their university outreach activities. We aim at documenting the violations of workers’ rights and collective bargaining prerogatives, as well as the restrictions on their freedom of association.
We aspire to become a space for expression and information for the trade union movement and its leaders, whose work of improving the working conditions of its members is increasingly threatened due to the persistent violation of their right to form associations, negotiate their working conditions in a collective basis, and exercise their right to strike.
We began our mission by supporting the workers of the health sector, who suffer the most from employer arbitrariness during the pandemic; We owe a lot to their courage and commitment amid this emergency.
Collective agreement, an instrument for the redistribution of wealth and power, is progressively disappearing in Venezuela. Health workers are particularly affected by this situation, the very same workers who put their lives at risk every day and deserve to be recognized and rewarded by society. More than 114 of them have died during the pandemic, due to the unhonored commitments of their employer -the State- regarding their working conditions.
In our recent bulletin, we describe the background to the harsh reality that currently affects health workers, who have gradually lost their labor rights in the past 20 years, and especially since 2013 when the dismantling of the collective agreements and previously won rights accelerated.
Translated by: José Rafael Medina
