VHeadline Venezuela News reports: In an international call from Beijing, where he accompanying President Hugo Chavez in negotiations with the Chinese government, Minister of Basic Industries & Mining (Mibam) has ordered the immediate dismissal of Lt. Col. Hector Herrera Jimenez from the presidency of the Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG) subsidiary CVG-Bauxilum. The news comes in the wake of last week's appointment of Army General, Carlos Acosta Perez to the presidency of CVG-Venalum.

It is understood (unofficially as yet) that Sanz is to appoint the CVG heavy industry conglomerate's executive vice president, Alfredo Arcila, at least for a transitional period during which a series of corporate restructuring plans will be put into effect.

Herrera Jimenez had been given the job at CVG-Bauxilum by Vice President of the Republic, Ramon Carrizalez, apparently without prior reference to President Hugo Chavez Frias.

While Sanz' decision has shocked the leadership of trade unions involved in negotiations with CVG management, it highlights growing differences between President Hugo Chavez Frias and his Vice President who is reportedly somewhat miffed by the fact that his wife, Yubiri Ortega de Carrizalez has been ignominiously back-burnered as Environment & Natural Resources (MinAmb) Minister following a series of incompetent ministerial decisions which go against the economic interests of the country.

Suprabaux CVG union general secretary Antonio Rivas says a number of labor organizations had already been discussing industrial action to protest a series of constant changes in company management ... he admits that he does NOT know how the firing of Herrera Jimenez will affect consultations over negative developments in labor and operational methods being developed by the latest administration. "We do not understand, neither accept how Mibam is affecting the administrative continuity of the company, which is affecting the company's business processes."

In operational aspects alone, CVG Bauxilum is losing close to a thousand tonnes of production per day because of poor administrative policies that over recent years have put the entire aluminum industry at risk ... "We can NOT now have that efforts being made by the IRS/Seniat to pay off company debts to cooperative suppliers and liabilities of workers, that we get a new president to inevitably turn everything upside down at the plant."
of the factory , "He said.

Quoted in today's issues of regional morning newspapers, Rivas says he is emphatic that the workers do NOT seek to defend Herrera Jimenez's dismissal in such an abrupt manner since it rather disrupts administrative continuity developed over the last few years. "We cannot see any benefit in having had to change stationery, contracts of sale and purchase orders after General Carlos Acosta Perez, then to have them all replaced in the name of Hector Herrera Jimenez and now again have to modify them in the name of a new company president!"

The current situation, however, remains in abeyance since although Herrera Jimenez has been separated from the CVG-Bauxilum presidency with immediate effect, the formal appointment of a new company president must wait for the return of Minister Sanz from President Chavez' visit to China and then to Russia.

Suprabaux has therefore called a special meeting of union members for early this morning local time to define which actions are to be taken by the labor force.

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