VHeadline Venezuela News reports: Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG) president & CEO, Rodolfo Sanz (who is also Minister of Basic Industries & Mines-Mibam in the Chavez government) has really riled trade unionists after failing to show up for a meeting at CVG headquarters on Thursday ... he's ignoring union demands for immediate negotiations and appears to have blanked the Sunep-CVG representative, Juan Gomez, although he (Sanz) was already warned that to ignore the union's ultimatum would be the last straw.

"Sanz said he would meet with us at 11:00 am, yesterday (Thursday) and we're not going to be take any more re-scheduling -- we know that President Chavez is here in Guyana and we do not want to be fobbed off with more excuses," Gomez told reporters as a 72-hour "truce" ended and all work at the CVG and its subsidiaries was called out on strike this morning.

Angry trade unionists say that they had been told by Sanz' assistant, Esther Gouthier, that he "might possible" have met with them at an undefined time "last evening or later in the night" but there was NO definitive agreement and (knowing Sanz' track record of failures to make it to scheduled meetings)) there was no guarantee that Sanz would actually deign to meet, even less that Chavez would condescend to come either."

Gomez explains that while the executive committee of Sunep-CVG is meeting today "to fine tune details of strike strategies" that are now to be activated, many workers who had been waiting for an answer has turned negative and decided to join the protest by employees of CVG Bauxilum as well as the steelworkers' protest outside CVG HQ in Ciudad Guayana.

CVG vice president, and 'interim' president of aluminum processing CVG-Bauxilum, Alfredo Arcila, claims that the workers' protest action is illegal and says that of their claims have already been recognized (although no payment has been made!). He claims that only three claims remain to be settled by the Labor Inspectorate although the unions have festooned the gates to the CVG complex with banners claiming that 22 more claims remain unsettled after more than two years.

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