Posted on 09/17/2005 7:35:17 AM PDT by mcg2000
Venezuelan Authorities Seize Idle Heinz Ketchup Plant
Friday, Sep 09, 2005 By: Gregory Wilpert – Venezuelanalysis.com
Caracas, Venezuela, September 9, 2005—Venezuelan military seized a Heinz Ketchup plant in Venezuela’s Monagas state last Monday. Heinz company representatives complained that the seizure represented, “a violation of property rights and free trade as well as due process.” Venezuela’s Minister for Agriculture and Land, Antonio Albarrán, argued, though, that 80% of the plant actually belongs to the workers and that Heinz bought the plant illegally in 1996. The plant has been closed for nearly a decade, according to Albarrán.
The take-over of the Heinz plant in the town of Caicara, Monagas, was carried out by Venezuelan troops at the request of the pro-Chavez state governor, José Gregorio Briceño. The move comes at a time that the Chavez government is investigating over 700 closed enterprises, evaluating them for their suitability for worker takeovers, via expropriation.
Workers at many other factories and businesses have begun taking matters in their own hands, not waiting for the government to act in the expropriation of idle factories.
The president of the anti-Chavez industrial business federation Conindustria, Juan Francisco Mejías, said that he hopes that the government will “rectify” its action in the case of the Heinz tomato processing plant.
However, the president of the National Confederation of Ranchers and Agricultural Businesses, José Augustín Campos, a group that is considered to be close to the government, said that Heinz's closing of the plant was a “criminal act” because it caused all the surrounding tomato growers to go out of business.
The coordinator of Venezuela’s new union federation, the National Union of Venezuelan Workers (UNT – Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Venezolanos), Marcela Máspero, said that the UNT is considering the take-over of 800 closed businesses. “Accompanied by the communities, we will occupy these businesses because we cannot continue to allow that the reactivation of the country’s productive apparatus is diminished due to the closure of businesses,” said Máspero.
Máspero also said that the UNT would ask Venezuela’s National Assembly to declare these businesses of “public utility,” a necessary step prior to the government’s expropriation of privately owned businesses. Máspero estimates that up to 20,000 jobs could be rescued via such takeovers.
According to Máspero there are currently eight businesses in Venezuela that workers have occupied, to which belongs the Heinz plant in Monagas. Others include Probamasa, a corn processing plant owned by the food and beverage company Polar; a plant belonging to the dairy company Parmalat, in Machiques; Parmalat in Barquisimeto; Sideroca Proacero in Cabimas; the valve factory Inveval in Los Teques; the paper plant Invepal in Morón; and the meat-packing company Fribarsa in Barinas. Only two of these, Inveval and Invepal, have completed the full legal procedure for turning the plants over to the workers.
Máspero explained, “First we occupy and then we resolve the issue of ownership, as there is always a reason for the occupation.” As an example she cited the recently occupied Promabrasa, where “the workers told us that for over six months now the business owes them back pay. We requested an inspection by the Ministry of Labor and they are carrying out all the legal procedures.”
According to Venezuelan law, once the National Assembly declares a business to be of “public utility,” the executive may expropriate it, compensating legal owners at market value for the business. Chavez has said that his government would turn such expropriated businesses into state and worker co-managed businesses.
Venezuela’s Labor Minister, Maria Cristina Iglesias, recently provided an assessment of the 700 businesses the government is considering for expropriation. According to Iglesias, in 155 of the cases both owners and workers have already committed themselves to the principle of co-management, implying that original owners and the workers would co-manage these, without the state’s involvement.
Using market cap as a metric:
Friday’s close=$12.2B
Using your less than 4% ownership
I guess you could say Teresa owns less than $488M of the company’s. I certainly would like to have less than half a billion wouldn’t you?
ROFLMPO
Just yanking your chain I totally agree with you substance and thrust of your post.
..I bet John F'n Kerry, just won't/can't understand....what happened in Czarist Russia (in 1918) and Castros' (in 1961) Cuba is now happening in Chevas' Venevuela...
Judges Stevens, Ginsberg, Bryer approve.
"The take-over of the Heinz plant in the town of Caicara, Monagas, was carried out by Venezuelan troops at the request of the pro-Chavez state governor, José Gregorio Briceño. The move comes at a time that the Chavez government is investigating over 700 closed enterprises, evaluating them for their suitability for worker takeovers, via expropriation."
Fascinating Communist strategy ... destroy the economy so badly that factories get idled, then 'take over' the factories that were idled by your own policies. hmmmm.
Just picking Kerry cherrys.
Inquiring minds want to know ---- Did they find Kerry's Military Records?????
They have control of the local Heinz enterprizes? We have no choice but to toss in Teresa Heinz and her giggilo, John Kerry Heinz.
This is actually a good idea, send a bunch of libs down there in uniform to take back Mr. and Mrs. Kerry's property from mad Hugo.., this could be like Operation Chickenhawk excapet just Operation Chicken (I have liberal moonbat friends, so I've read Franken's books).......
It's not an issue of "outsourcing". Most of the factories Heinz has overseas are for products that are made there and delivered there, not brought back into the US.
Heinz didn't outsource?
Please pass this note along to your Union Steward before the next meeting at the cannery ...
The overall tax on imported goods vs. the projected sale will play a large role in building overseas - logistics costs, import/export tariffs, labor pool, labor rates, construction costs, etc
I have no idea.
Please pass this note along to your Union Steward before the next meeting at the cannery ...
You're talking to the wrong woman. I've been self employed since 1986. I don't believe in unions, but that's another story. :o)
The overall tax on imported goods vs. the projected sale will play a large role in building overseas - logistics costs, import/export tariffs, labor pool, labor rates, construction costs, etc
I haven't moved into the international arena.....yet, I have to defer to your knowledge on this issue. I was just taking a swipe at Heinz because of Kerry. LOL
I'd never step on that logic - swipe away! lol
Looks like Cuba all over again - Tuh-Ray-Zuh ya had it comming!!!!
Or the Congo (Katanga), or Rhodesia, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Iraq, or Cuba? - It's called Marxism.
Now, I'm all embarrassed. I forget that men don't always see "logic" the same way women do. LOL!
I seriously doubt any of their factories in Australia send Vegimite over here... Nor would you want it....
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