Preliminary Test

The worst strike in 14 years all but paralyzed Venezuela's $2 billion oil industry last week. It began when two small unions in the western oilfields walked out because employers refused to renegotiate a contract that still had a year to run. When the government declared the stoppage illegal, more than half the country's 40,000 oil workers quit in sympathy.

That was enough to make an effective strike. Creole, the Standard Oil Co. (NJ.) subsidiary that produces almost half Venezuela's oil, reported output down 75% and closed its 300,000-barrel-a-day pipeline south of Lake Maracaibo for fear of sabotage. Shell Oil was reported to be closed down even tighter than Creole. The stoppage was just as tough on the government: its revenues, derived mainly from oil royalties, fell off sharply.

At week's end the military junta which rules Venezuela declared martial law in the oilfields, then moved to dissolve the striking unions on the ground that they had "altered their specific objectives and converted themselves into an instrument of political action." Later, the government came right out and charged Communists and the outlawed Acción Democrática party with fomenting the strike.

The only real labor leadership in the Venezuelan oilfields since the junta overthrew President Romulo Gallegos in 1948 has been Communist. One of the first things the junta did on coming to power was to jail, exile or drive underground all labor chieftains belonging to Gallegos' New-Dealing Acción Democrática party. That opened the door for the Communists.

By last week the Communists apparently felt ready for a preliminary trial of strength with the government. Because it was largely a test, the unionists refrained from violence and sabotage, and the government's use of martial law seemed enough to contain the situation. But U.S. and British experience had shown that as a practical matter soldiers cannot dig coal, and it was hardly likely that the government could keep 500 million barrels of oil a year flowing out of Venezuela without coming to some sort of understanding with labor. Unless the government could find labor leadership good enough to force them out, Communists would soon be making bigger trouble in the most economically strategic area in Latin America.