Venezuela: Highest Minimum Wage in Latin America

Venezuela: Highest Minimum Wage in Latin America

A 30 percent raise came into force on May 1 and it will reach 5 million workers and 1.2 million pensioners. Expropriation of Venezuela’s largest steelmaker, Sidor, becomes official.

The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, raised Venezuela’s minimum wage by 30% on May 1, 2008.

During a national broadcast, the Venezuelan president also announced that all public employees’ wages will be increase by 30% and the salary scale will be adjusted. This event also included the swearing-in ceremony of the new Minister of Popular Power for Work, Roberto Hernández.

On this occasion, this raise gives Venezuela the highest minimum wage in Latin America and increases it from US $ 285 to US $ 372. President Chávez said such raise is justice and will include workers from both the Venezuelan public and private sectors in rural and urban areas.

”We’ll defeat inflation, but not at the expense of workers,” he stressed.

Venezuelans’ minimum wage moves from the second to the first place in Latin America, whose minimum wage average is US $ 312. In addition, Venezuelan workers earning minimum wages also receive US $ 186 in food stamps.

The monthly minimum income of Venezuelan workers will total US $ 558, which is 2.6 times higher than the average minimum wage of any worker in the region.

President Chávez explained that the Venezuelan State will invest over US $ 2.5 billion in this move, thus benefiting 5,333,726 workers representing 20% of the Venezuelan population.

He added that in the public sector 328,288 administrative employees and workers providing technical support; 268,569 professionals and technicians and 168,411 workers, as well as 1.2 million pensioners, will be benefited.

”I think I have the morals to ask the country’s workers to join the construction of the Bolivarian socialism,” said President Chávez.

Sidor joins public sector

At the same event, President Chávez signed a Decree that orders the nationalization of the largest Venezuelan steelmaker Siderurgica del Orinoco (Sidor, Spanish acronym), which was privatizwed in 1997 and controlled by the Italian-Argentinean company Ternium.

In this regard, he assured the Bolivarian Government has followed all the legal procedures regarding this measure.


“Sidor has been recovered by the Venezuelan government. Let’s turn Sidor into a socialist company, belonging to the socialist State and workers,” highlighted the Venezuelan president.

Sidor, located in Bolívar state (Venezuela’s southeast), has a payroll of 4,500 workers, produces 85% of the Venezuelan steel and is the most important steelmaker in the Andean and Caribbean regions.