afl-cio and unt/ctv:
-------------------SUSTAR FIRST------------------------
“Here in Venezuela, the situation in the unions is similar to all the countries in Latin America and, I would say, the greater part of the world,” Gil said in an interview last August. “The number of unionized workers isn’t more than 12 percent. That means we can’t win.” Therefore, he said, the UNT demands “universal unionization,” in which “workers in every enterprise, economic sector, and branch of work can vote for a union in a way that’s massive, plural, and in a representative [labor] central.”[5] Gil’s perspectives on unions put him squarely on the left wing of the UNT, which is contending with more moderate forces for leadership of the new federation. In October 2004, Gil, who had previously served as the general secretary of SINTRALCASA, recaptured his old post in a recall election that ousted his rival, Trino Silva. But the Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled the election to be illegal, several weeks later.[6]
(...) The internal struggle in the UNT reflects the pressures on organized labor in a highly polarized society. Yet, for both the AFL-CIO representative in the Andes and the CTV executive board member Froilán Barrios, the UNT is an “arm of the state.”[7] An example, said Barrios, is the recently launched gas workers union, Sindicato Unitario de Trabajadores del Gas (SUTG). “Every day this union seems more like the unions of the ex-USSR and Cuba—a type of commissariat of the Communist Party, where they are more repressive organs against the workers.”[8] Barrios acknowledged that there are clasista (class-conscious) leaders in the UNT. But others, he said, “are using their relationship with the state, well, to enrich themselves.”
(...) In fact, the Venezuelan state provided 90 percent of the funding for the CTV in the 1960s and 1970s.[10] The AFL-CIO’s ties to the CTV, moreover, have been among its closest with any foreign labor federation. This relationship has continued despite the CTV’s alliance with the forces that mounted the April 2002 coup—of which the CIA had foreknowledge—that was embraced by the Bush administration.[11] The AFL-CIO’s support for the CTV continued through the devastating oil industry lockout, and the strike that followed.
(...) There are in fact serious criticisms to be made about the Chávez government from a trade union standpoint. Yet, by rejecting the legitimacy of the UNT out of hand, and backing the CTV, the AFL-CIO has lent political credibility to the conservative Venezuelan opposition. This, in turn, has revived debate over the AFL-CIO’s involvement in U.S. foreign policy.[12] Indeed, a look at the AFL-CIO’s past and present in Venezuela points to two conclusions: that the files on organized labor’s collaboration with U.S. foreign policy should be opened, and that the AFL-CIO’s reliance on government funds for international work should end.
(...) The situation for Venezuelan labor, he said, “is closer to Colombia than anything else” in Latin America. “You have a government that is systematically and consistently violating fundamental labor rights in an attempt to eliminate independent labor.”
(...) Yet, under Ortega, the CTV quickly swung further to the right into an alliance with the business chamber of commerce, the Federación de Cámaras y Asociaciones de Comercio y Producción (FEDECAMARAS), calling four general strikes with the backing of the employers. The general strike of April 2002 became the pretext for the unsuccessful coup.
(...) The representative dismissed as absurd the charge that, through its support for the CTV, the AFL-CIO gave de facto backing for the coup. He acknowledged that the CTV “is far from perfect,” but defended the CTV-FEDECAMARAS alliance and their meetings on the eve of the coup attempt. “They [the CTV] were meeting regularly with civil society organizations, looking for strategies to confront Chavismo,” together, he said. “But these meetings were open, they were public.” He pointed out that Ortega and other CTV leaders didn’t sign the dictatorial decree issued by FEDECAMARAS chief Pedro Carmona. Rather, Ortega was “utilized” by Carmona, he added. (Ortega was ultimately arrested for his role in the coup nearly three years later.)
(...) What is indisputable, however, is that Ortega joined with FEDECAMARAS to call the strike and march that set the stage for the coup. This alliance was facilitated by the Solidarity Center, which funded five regional meetings to promote labor-business collaboration, capped by a national CTV-FEDECAMARAS gathering on March 5, 2002—a month prior to the coup. “The joint action further established the CTV and FEDECAMARAS as the flagship organizations leading the growing opposition to the Chávez government,” concluded a Solidarity Center report about the effort, which was funded by a National Endowment for Democracy (NED) grant for $125,7114 in 2001-2002.[25] This direct support for the opposition’s mobilization appears to go far beyond the Solidarity Center’s stated aim of “building capacity” in the CTV.
(...) The AFL-CIO’s Gacek said that the federation supported the Chávez government wherever its policies are “pro-labor” and “reflect a pro-social agenda.” “Really, the only area where we are in disagreement has been with regard to the incursions against freedom of association,” he said. Assumptions about the nature of Solidarity Center activities in Venezuela today are based on a mistaken comparison with AIFLD’s role in the past, Gacek continued. “I’m not saying in any way these things were done,” he said, about criticisms of AIFLD’s past role. “But…the premise was that there was a pro-U.S. government position that was assumed by the institutes in the past in the Cold War period.” The critics’ arguments, he said, boiled down to this: “There was a coup, ergo the AFL-CIO was involved in making the coup. [It’s] basically using a certain syllogistic reasoning where the premises are totally faulty.”
(...) Steve Ellner, the labor historian, disputed this, pointing to the CTV’s support for the regressive “reform” of Social Security in the 1990s, and the termination of the severance payment system for laid-off workers.[33] “The argument that the AFL-CIO was supporting the good guys in the CTV, the leftists and the moderates who were anti-Chavista but also anti-Ortega, doesn’t explain the fact that the CTV joined hands with FEDECAMARAS to oppose [land reform] legislation,” he said.[34]]
(...) [important: UNT's autonomy] Such policies give pause to trade unionists wary of government interference in organized labor. Yet, the picture is far more complex than the CTV, the AFL-CIO—and for that matter, the Chávez government—have acknowledged. The UNT isn’t a creation of the state, but the result of a break by some union leaders from the CTV after the oil lockout-strike, to form a bloc with pro-Chávez leftists and dissident social Christians in 2003.[35] Alliances with the UNT’s 21-member interim coordinating committee have been shifting ever since, with the Left calling for a more aggressive stance towards employers, and emphasizing workers’ self-management.[36] A major influence on the UNT is the experience of the “new unionism” in Ciudad Guyana’s steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s.[37]
(...) The challenge for the UNT is how to support the “revolutionary process”—known as “el proceso”—yet independently assert the interests of workers.
(...) This freewheeling debate within the UNT has little in common with the centralized pronouncements of a state-controlled union.
(...) Where does this leave AFL-CIO policy in Venezuela? The Solidarity Center’s focus on trade union independence is necessary, but far from sufficient. The CTV was, after all, formally free from state domination, but in practice was subsidized and controlled by a corrupt party duopoly that ruled Venezuela for more than 40 years. Therefore, the Solidarity Center’s attempt to shore up the CTV-FEDECAMARAS alliance in the name of “dialogue” inevitably meant aiding the effort to re-impose a discredited status quo.
-------------------GACEK RESPONSE------------------------
(...) The CTV executive refused to sign the infamous decree of the short-lived Carmona regime that dissolved the National Assembly. The CTV refused any and all offers to serve in the coup-installed government, and made a point of not being present at the inauguration of Carmona’s cabinet.
(...) There exists an unfortunate conventional wisdom which depicts a socially progressive, thoroughly incorruptible, and perfectly democratic Chávez administration pitted against an opposition that is 100 percent corrupt, putschist, antidemocratic, and fascist. Yet, the thousands of CTV members who marched to Miraflores to protest Chávez’s violations of freedom of association and collective bargaining rights were not demanding his ouster by means of military force.
(...) We did not finance the March 5 event. However, the symposium produced a constructive, joint CTV-FEDECAMARAS proposal calling for direct negotiation with the Chávez administration on job creation and poverty abatement. The statement expressly rejected “all forms of violence and military coups,” reaffirming “dialogue and discussion as the path to resolve conflicts.”
(...) [hmmm...] Sustar parrots the Venezuelan government’s line that the shutdown of PDVSA’s operations in December 2002 was basically a management lockout engineered by the CTV’s leadership. Then why did the government fire nearly 20,000 workers in retaliation? There are only 35,000 PDVSA employees, so the idea that all of the fired employees were “management” is absolute nonsense.
(...) In fact, the unions representing PDVSA workers (including those of FEDEPETROL, with its pro-Chávez President Rafael Rosales) joined the job action to demand a change in the Company’s overall public policy, planning, investment, and labor relations practices. Both the Venezuelan judiciary and the ILO’s Freedom of Association Commission concluded that the shutdown was a legitimate strike, ordering the reinstatement of the fired workers. (Upon receiving the news from Geneva, Chávez retorted that the ILO could “go fry monkeys.”)
(...) [question of universality] Nonetheless, saying that the AFL-CIO should never have worked with an internally democratic national labor central of 1.2 million (2001 CNE census of CTV membership), representing well over 80 percent of Venezuela’s organized workforce, is the functional equivalent of saying we should not have a relationship with the Venezuelan labor movement.
(...) [this is obviously where an apparent tension appears: for some leftists, a necessary evil; for the AFL-CIO, cannot be violated - paper can argue that this is a false dichotomy, in the venezuelan case, as agency appears on the grassroots] We have praised Chávez for agrarian reform, public health and education, and his advocacy of social justice. We have joined him in its criticism of the FTAA. We have publicly condemned the coup attempt against him. But we will continue to denounce his systematic and reprehensible violations of freedom of association and collective bargaining rights.
-------------------SUSTAR RESPONSE------------------------
Stan Gacek systematically avoids addressing the central thrust of my article: that social polarization and class conflict in Venezuela has led to the revival of militancy in that country’s labor movement, expressed through the creation of the UNT.
(...) What’s more, in February 2003, the AFL-CIO Executive Council passed a resolution criticizing the Venezuelan government’s prosecution of “brother Ortega” for his role in the oil lockout-strike. If this isn’t “support” for Ortega, then what is it? (As for Ortega’s current predicament, he’s been charged so far only with his role in the lockout-strike, but still faces possible charges in connection with the coup, according to the website of Venezuela’s Panorama newspaper.)
(...) It’s telling that Gacek chooses to rehash old news rather than provide evidence for a comment made by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center’s Andean representative—that the new UNT is an “arm of the state.” That’s because the UNT, as I tried to show, is full of tension and debate on issues ranging from organizational structures to relations to the government, and from contract negotiations to socialism. Moreover, extensive interviews with Venezuelan workers highlighted the way in which the CTV leaders’ alliance with business shattered its little remaining credibility with union members—particularly in the oil industry, where the rank and file effectively ran the refineries during the strike-lockout.
(...) I don’t claim that the UNT is immune to government influence or manipulation—no union federation can be. I do, however, argue that the UNT is not a creation of the Venezuelan state, but is a product of workers’ struggle and is worthy of international solidarity. Gacek gives a nod in that direction with his stated willingness to “work with” the UNT. But that doesn’t mean much in view of his attempts to justify the AFL-CIO and Solidarity Center’s support for the CTV—with U.S. government funds—during the period of the coup and oil lockout-strike.