PDVSA Workers Are Passing Out on the Job
Once the goose that laid the golden eggs, PDVSA is paying wages so miserable that its workers are malnourished and can’t do their jobs.
Photo: Bloomberg
Fabiola Zerpa, from Bloomberg, just published a harrowing story about the state of PDVSA. Malnourished workers are passing out in the workplace:
Hunger is hastening the ruin of Venezuelan’s oil industry as workers grow too weak and hungry for heavy labor. With children dying of malnutrition and adults sifting garbage for table scraps, food has become more important than employment, and thousands are walking off the job. Absenteeism and mass resignations mean few are left to produce the oil that keeps the tattered economy functioning.
And those aren’t isolated cases. Even union leaders are affected:
Ivan Freitas, a PDVSA union leader and critic of President Nicolás Maduro’s regime, said Wednesday that in Zulia State 12 malnourished workers collapsed in November and December and had to be taken off drilling platforms for treatment. More go down each day, he said.
Workers must endure inhumane conditions with virtually no pay, and the only thing the fuckers at PDVSA do to prevent mass resignations is to delay bureaucratic processes.
According to the article:
In one human resources office, a sign advertised a limit of five resignations a day. (…) “Management is holding them back to stop brain and technical drain,” said Jose Bodas, general secretary of United Federation of Venezuelan Oil Workers (…) “They’re giving up because of hunger,” (…) “They’re leaving because they get paid better abroad. This is unheard of, a catastrophe.”
Watching the collapse of PDVSA under this administration (and the whole country, for that matter) has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion: you can see the wheels starting to fly off, the beginning of an explosion at the point of the impact, the debris going everywhere. It’s still recognizable, most of the wagons are still intact, but we all know it’s a matter of time, the trains have crashed and there’s no stopping this.
If only we were talking about actual trains, and not PDVSA, the company that’s barely keeping this country together…
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