Abstract

BARRIOS GRAZIANI, Leticia  and  CAMEJO RUIZ, Armando J. The Social Security Reform Process in Venezuela: A Vision from the Venezuelan Labour Union Movement (CTV). Gaceta Laboral [online]. 2007, vol.13, n.1, pp.5-28. ISSN 1315-8597.

The article proposes a documentary, descriptive and theoretical analysis regarding the social security reform process in Venezuela during the last two governments. Added to this, the crisis of the welfare state is underlined which, taken together with the phenomenon of expanding poverty, lays the foundation for disturbing components of Venezuelan social development. On the other hand, it treats the economic, social and political aspects that configured the crisis of social security models implanted in the 1960s in a great number of Latin American nations and which led to their reform in the mid-1980s. Among the topics especially examined are the Venezuelan social security reform process, back and forth movements in its ideological concept, fragility of the social actors’ participation in designing policies and the debate generated among experts on the theme, as well as in the implicated institutions, which will affect its content and make known a set of proposals for a social security model desirable for the Venezuelan people. Finally, the current vision and position of some representatives of the Venezuelan labour union movement are analyzed, especially those belonging to the Workers’ Centre of Venezuela (CTV - Central de Trabajadores de Venezuela), regarding the Venezuelan Social Security reform developed by the current government, as well as alternatives and challenges to the labour union movement in the face of poverty and the proposals demanding new reforms to the current Social Security law.

Keywords : Welfare state; poverty; neoliberalism; privatization; social security.