Employees of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) protest outside the company's executive offices in Maracaibo, Venezuela, Friday, April 5, 2002. The sign at bottom left reads "Workers United for PDVSA." Work stoppages and protests at Petroleos de Venezuela's Caracas headquarters and installations across the nation erupted to protest what demonstrators call President Hugo Chavez's attempts to politicize the company. PDVSA is Venezuela's largest income producer and Venezuela is the third largest oil exporter to the United States and the world's fourth largest exporter overall. (AP Photo/Ana Maria Otero)
Chavez's Head of Venezuelan Oil Giant PdVSA Reportedly Asks 2 Executives to Resign--[Excerpt] CARACAS , Venezuela -- The conflict pitting managers at state oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela SA against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government continued with PdVSA's president asking two top executives to resign. Gaston Parra, president of PdVSA, asked two company managers to step down, according to Saturday's editions of daily El Universal. Management began meetings to discuss possible actions after Oscar Murillo, a legal advisor at PdVSA, and Armando Izquierdo, a public affairs manager, were called on to resign. Hundreds of managers at PdVSA, the largest oil company in Latin America, have been protesting Mr. Chavez's appointment of five board...
Venezuela: Labor Strife of a Different Collar - Pdvsa--[Excerpt] CARACAS, Venezuela, March 18 - Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. may be state owned, but it is known internationally as efficient and well managed, even cutting edge. The company, one of the world's largest oil producers, has also long attracted the brightest minds in Venezuela to its singular task: producing the huge amounts of oil that motor this country.
Now, however, the behemoth, with $20 billion a year in oil sales and 40,000 employees, is in turmoil.
Its white-collar workers are locked in a bitter feud with the government of President Hugo Chávez, whose firing of the company president last month precipitated a rousing, public quarrel that has dominated the local headlines, caused a work slowdown and threatens to spill into a full- fledged strike. Such an event would be calamitous for a country where oil accounts for 80 percent of exports, most of it bound for the United States.
"This is a tragedy," said Luis Giusti, a former company president and now senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "It is inconceivable that in this company people would go out and protest. They would have been fired right away. But this is a crisis situation." [End Excerpt]