Alcasa.

Alcasa, a state-owned aluminum processing plant in the southeastern state of Bolivar, has prolonged been an important employer in a region where the lion's share of Venezuela's mining and processing plants are located. nevertheless since the mid-1990s it has been plagued by way of inefficiency and corruption. According to Trino Silva, secretary general of the union, Alcasa's production has been in "the red" for the past sixteen years. notwithstanding that the aluminum they produce is in high demand and despite considerable production increases through the past few years, the company has been unable to divert a profit. Silva blames a corrupt factory management that used Alcasa as its piggy bank from one extremity to the other of the 1990s, all the while holding the threat of privatization throughout workers' heads. It was no idle threat. A not many miles down the road, SIDOR, single in kind of Latin America's largest dirk plants and long the pride of the state Venezuelan Corporation of Guyana (CVG) was privatized in 1997 From a workforce approaching 20000 full-time direct employee (with several thousand more contract and temporary workers) in the late 1980 SIDOR has downsized to simply 4,000 direct employees and approximately 6000 contract workers.

to this time in recent years the political landscape in Bolivar has changed significantly. Radical unionism, near-dormant through every part of the 1990s, has been resurrect in a region with a tradition of radical syndicalism. And for the first year of Trino Silva's bound as secretary general of Alcasa's union, he has made the fight against corruption a cause celebre

Last January, Silva caught a break; the head of the newly created Ministry of Basic Industry Victor Alvarez, shares his commitment to eradicating corruption and inefficiency at Alcasa. To do in this way Alvarez is relying on the workers themselves. Alcasa is to be the region's guinea pig for the national government's strategy of state-worker co-management, a theory of shared management between state representatives and workers. onward January 18, the government expropriated bankrupt paper company Venepal, reinvesting $14 million to restart production at the factory in subordination to a system of co-management. In a articulate utterance to the National Assembly where Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez announced the decision, he called for state direct of all basic industry, and for the conversion of state scamper enterprises to co-management. In the industrial state of Bolivar, Alcasa is the trail blazer, and in and nothing else a few months they are beginning to behold results.

On March 22-23 I visited Alcasa and was mov at what I saw. Silva was meeting with workers in the factory lobby explaining the trajectory of the business and speaking to them about Alcasa's responsibility to the community and to unemploy workers. Later, workers make choice ofed Gustavo Marquez--an electrical maintenance technician--as the just discovered manager of lamination (under the not new system he would have been appointed through the factory president). The nearest day, there was an inauguration of a small room repaired in record time on an enthusiastic group of workers. After exhibiting the newly functioning confined apartment the workers were hosted as visitors of honor by the president of Alcasa, Carlos Lanz, in recognition of their effort. After luncheon fifty-nine students of the lately founded Institute for Endogenous increase who strictly attended their third week of training nine-to-five each day, were recognized for their eagerness to become promoter of the participatory proces that is being encouraged on the new CVG leadership, presided throughout by Minister Victor Alvarez. Finally there was a form in which the managers, newly selected by the workers, assumed their responsibilities.

The following is a brief interview with the union general-secretary, Trino Silva, and the recent manager of lamination, Gustavo Marquez.

Marta Harnecker: I view a ballot box; can you explain to me what is happening?

Trino Silva: We are choosing the manager of lamination and pair workers' representatives to share in that management. We want the manager to arise from the heart of the workers. The manager will not direct alone or with barely the two workers' representatives. He must engage with all the workers, and a managerial assembly will make macro-decisions as it is as how to advance, in what manner to make the budget, and to what degree to be productive. God gives us a visible form [i]or[/i] frame a right leg, a left leg however the body cannot walk with sole one leg, right? We ne each organ to function in such a manner that the body functions, thus it is with Alcasa. In each management sector, the workers will name a manager. After that we will discuss the kind of company we want.

MH: wherefore so much haste in electing the modern managers?

TS: We had to stir quickly to rid ourselves of the previous managers because they had abandoned the company. There were acts of corruption that we denounced lengthy ago; they tried to sabotage the business. The managers that we are now choosing are transitory. They will occupy their positions for three month alone In these three months we will establish the regularitys of the game; we will define the kind of management we want. We will discuss the salaries of managers.