venezuelan steel nationalization (April 2008, Green Left Weekly):
(...) Sidor was privatised in 1997, one year before Chavez was elected. The major share-holder has been an Argentinean-controlled conglomerate Techint. Since privatisation, the workforce has been slashed from around 15,000 to just over 5000 and the company has used contract labour in violation of a government decree banning the practice.
(...) [not fully beholden to state interests; in the sense that there was opposition to the chavistas, which chavez realized] The move to re-nationalise Sidor came after more than a year of intense struggle by the Sidor workers, together with the people of Guayana, against not just Sidor management but also the policies of the local “Chavista” governor, Fransisco Rangel Gomez, and the labour minister Jose Ramon Rivero — both of whom have been accused of anti-worker actions.
(...) The move comes as part of a “second wave” of nationalisations being carried out by the Chavez government, following the recent nationalisation of Venezuela’s cement industry (nearly 40 factories), several milk producing plants and the subsequent takeover of 32 large farms. These moves are part of government efforts to recuperate control over food production and the construction industry — both of which play a crucial role in national development.
(...) The labour movement has been electrified by the Sidor victory. In another victory, which reflects the struggle within the pro-Chavez camp between more right-wing sections and those seeking to deepen the revolution, Rivero has been replaced as labour minister, presumably due to his bad role in the Sidor dispute, as well as his public support for splitting the pro-Chavez National Union of Workers (UNT) and creating a new federation.
------
from Stalin Borges, UNT National Coordinator:
(...) [interpretation of what was being demanded] This decision by the Chavez government, justly interpreting the demand raised by the workers and people of Guyana (and won by the colossal struggle of the Sidor workers and the revolutionary people of Guyana with the support of people from across the country) changes the political conjuncture following the defeat of Chavez’s proposed constitutional reforms in the December 2 referendum.
(...) [concretizing the interests of Capital] The majority of Sidor shares were owned by a corporation comprised of capital from a range of countries including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. The Argentinean and Brazilian interests were closely tied to the governments of those two countries, and the Venezuelan interests were tied to key families of the Venezuelan oligarchy.
(...) [what can chavez do? listen to the workers] The will of the Sidor workers is to manage production and the administration of the company. They will present a written proposal for how the new Sidor should function. Implementing the policies supported by the majority of Sidor workers would be, beyond speeches, a clear demonstration by Chavez and the government that they do want to embark on the path of socialism.
(...) [again, chavez has not been infallible] Workers have seen that it is possible to take away control of a company from a powerful transnational and that this company can be administered by its workers with good results. They have seen it is possible to change the course of the government — and even of Chavez himself — regarding some of its mistaken policies.
(...) We need to take up the call made by Chavez for the working class to assume its protagonist role in the Bolivarian revolution.
(...) For a while now, [rivero] has acted in favour of the bosses and the bureaucrats, favouring the plans of the right wing within and outside the Bolivarian process. His last move was to decree a new union confederation to split the UNT. This problem was resolved when Chavez, interpreting the sentiment of workers against Rivero, removed him from his position.
(...) It is urgently needed to convoke a meeting of all the currents within the UNT and the revolution in order to begin to take firm steps towards a necessary regroupment and unification of a working class leadership — one that is democratic, pluralist, and independent of the state. Let the workers, the grassroots unions and their natural leaders be the ones who define the steps towards the reorganisation of the UNT — without excluding any current that supports the revolution.
(...) The mobilisation of the working class — involving the UNT, the social movements and the battalions of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) — is the only guarantee to successfully confronting the right-wing opposition, as well as the betrayal of the “endogenous right” within Chavismo.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
venezuelan workers to join PSUV:
[joining the party] Venezuela’s Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT or National Workers’ Union) has called on its 2 million workers to unite in the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV or United Socialist Party of Venezuela), despite the bitter infighting and conflicts over tactics, strategy and politics that had threatened the union confederation’s participation in the Bolivarian revolution.
(...) This clientilist, corporatist union close to the discredited elitist party Acción Democrática, has since been eclipsed by the UNT and the new union confederation’s support for Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution. However, the debate between workers organised in different factions in the UNT over the extent to which the union should support the President, has created divisions that have diverted workers into political infighting.
(...) [the crux of the matter] Five political ‘currents’ are fighting for control in the UNT, and the two most important factions - CCURA (Corriente Clasista, Unitaria, Revolucionaria, Autónoma or Autonomous, Revolutionary, United Class Current) and FSBT (Fuerza Socialista Bolivariano de Trabajadores or Workers’ Socialist Bolivarian Force) - have been in an often bitter fight to make the UNT an unconditional Chávista union, as the FSBT desires, or to make it more independent, as CCURA wants.
(...) The last UNT Congress, in 2006, ended in fights, walkouts and the split into the five political factions, but Orlando Chirino, CCURA faction leader, believes it is wrong to describe the divisions as personal. ‘A battle has been fought between two conceptions - on the one hand those who want to tie the union to Chávez, and on the other those who are fighting for sovereignty and an autonomous and independent union movement.’
(...) But UNT organisers in the FSBT faction, such as Jacobo Torres de León, claim the divisions have meant the union has failed to concentrate on organising workers. The FSBT points out that workers’ unionisation rate in Venezuela is still less than 20 per cent, and argues that the union should concentrate on sindicalist demands in workplaces and be close to the President politically to have influence.
(...) [the question of the uniqueness of labor as a social movement] Even President Chávez has criticised the UNT’s failure to organise workers in a united union, and he has even called into question ‘the idea that workers and unions are central to the revolution’, choosing instead to emphasise the PSUV’s and the barrio consejos comunales centrality to the revolution.
(...) But Chávez’s impatience with the UNT’s infighting took him further earlier this year when he declared to a PSUV political meeting in Caracas that ‘unions should not be autonomous - one must put a stop to that.’ This prompted Orlando Chirino to respond to the President declaring that workers have the right to politicise their unions and be independent of the state.
(...) ‘Lenin wrote that unions should be independent… when Stalin took power in Russia and led the state and the party, one of the first things he eliminated was the independence of the unions, precisely against the opinion of Lenin,’ Chirino wrote, and, insisting on the unions’ right to be sovereign and autonomous, he recalled President Chávez’s statement that ‘the PSUV will not be a Stalinist political party.’
(...) That the UNT has finally called on all workers to join the PSUV does not mean that the dispute between the union’s factions has been resolved. The FSBT believes that this call will move the UNT closer to Chávez, while the CCURA has recognised that the union cannot stand apart from the 5.7million Venezuelans that have registered an interest in participating in the party.
(...) Pérez realises that massive worker participation in the new party is the best insurance against what he calls ‘bureaucratisation’ and the threat that a clientilist relationship between the PSUV and the union, similar to the relationship between the rightist Acción Democrática and the discredited CTV union in the Nineties, could develop. ‘CCURA will join the PSUV, we will fight for workers’ control, and we want to maintain union autonomy - not for its own sake, but because independence is a revolutionary necessity,’ Pérez says. ‘There is no contradiction between organising in the PSUV to support the revolution, and also having independent unions. Both are part of the same fight towards socialism in Venezuela.’
[joining the party] Venezuela’s Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT or National Workers’ Union) has called on its 2 million workers to unite in the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV or United Socialist Party of Venezuela), despite the bitter infighting and conflicts over tactics, strategy and politics that had threatened the union confederation’s participation in the Bolivarian revolution.
(...) This clientilist, corporatist union close to the discredited elitist party Acción Democrática, has since been eclipsed by the UNT and the new union confederation’s support for Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution. However, the debate between workers organised in different factions in the UNT over the extent to which the union should support the President, has created divisions that have diverted workers into political infighting.
(...) [the crux of the matter] Five political ‘currents’ are fighting for control in the UNT, and the two most important factions - CCURA (Corriente Clasista, Unitaria, Revolucionaria, Autónoma or Autonomous, Revolutionary, United Class Current) and FSBT (Fuerza Socialista Bolivariano de Trabajadores or Workers’ Socialist Bolivarian Force) - have been in an often bitter fight to make the UNT an unconditional Chávista union, as the FSBT desires, or to make it more independent, as CCURA wants.
(...) The last UNT Congress, in 2006, ended in fights, walkouts and the split into the five political factions, but Orlando Chirino, CCURA faction leader, believes it is wrong to describe the divisions as personal. ‘A battle has been fought between two conceptions - on the one hand those who want to tie the union to Chávez, and on the other those who are fighting for sovereignty and an autonomous and independent union movement.’
(...) But UNT organisers in the FSBT faction, such as Jacobo Torres de León, claim the divisions have meant the union has failed to concentrate on organising workers. The FSBT points out that workers’ unionisation rate in Venezuela is still less than 20 per cent, and argues that the union should concentrate on sindicalist demands in workplaces and be close to the President politically to have influence.
(...) [the question of the uniqueness of labor as a social movement] Even President Chávez has criticised the UNT’s failure to organise workers in a united union, and he has even called into question ‘the idea that workers and unions are central to the revolution’, choosing instead to emphasise the PSUV’s and the barrio consejos comunales centrality to the revolution.
(...) But Chávez’s impatience with the UNT’s infighting took him further earlier this year when he declared to a PSUV political meeting in Caracas that ‘unions should not be autonomous - one must put a stop to that.’ This prompted Orlando Chirino to respond to the President declaring that workers have the right to politicise their unions and be independent of the state.
(...) ‘Lenin wrote that unions should be independent… when Stalin took power in Russia and led the state and the party, one of the first things he eliminated was the independence of the unions, precisely against the opinion of Lenin,’ Chirino wrote, and, insisting on the unions’ right to be sovereign and autonomous, he recalled President Chávez’s statement that ‘the PSUV will not be a Stalinist political party.’
(...) That the UNT has finally called on all workers to join the PSUV does not mean that the dispute between the union’s factions has been resolved. The FSBT believes that this call will move the UNT closer to Chávez, while the CCURA has recognised that the union cannot stand apart from the 5.7million Venezuelans that have registered an interest in participating in the party.
(...) Pérez realises that massive worker participation in the new party is the best insurance against what he calls ‘bureaucratisation’ and the threat that a clientilist relationship between the PSUV and the union, similar to the relationship between the rightist Acción Democrática and the discredited CTV union in the Nineties, could develop. ‘CCURA will join the PSUV, we will fight for workers’ control, and we want to maintain union autonomy - not for its own sake, but because independence is a revolutionary necessity,’ Pérez says. ‘There is no contradiction between organising in the PSUV to support the revolution, and also having independent unions. Both are part of the same fight towards socialism in Venezuela.’
nationalization of SIDOR, reuters report
But he will soon have to deal with complex labor relations with Sidor's almost 10,000 workers and management.
Sidor was founded four decades ago and grew rapidly in the 1970s oil boom to become one of Latin America's largest steel operations.
The union is one of the strongest in the country and is divided between pro-Chavez and opposition tendencies.
But he will soon have to deal with complex labor relations with Sidor's almost 10,000 workers and management.
Sidor was founded four decades ago and grew rapidly in the 1970s oil boom to become one of Latin America's largest steel operations.
The union is one of the strongest in the country and is divided between pro-Chavez and opposition tendencies.
interview with Stalin Pérez Borges (SPB), national coordinator of the National Union of Workers (UNT) and member of the editorial board of the newspaper Marea Socialista and Marcos Garcia (MG), national coordinator of the public sector federation, FENTRASEP and member also of Marea Socialista.
[mg]: [demanding from chavez] "First a general increase in salaries for all workers is necessary. The basic increase announced by President Chavez every year is not enough, today we, together with many others demand a general emergency increase, higher than the indices of inflation. This is an increase that will serve to relieve millions who have not yet been able to discuss their collective contracts, their socio-economic necessities."
[sp]: "The 6-hour day can and should be established by presidential decree, this is an issue not only of work conditions, but a political issue of the highest important. We need a working class with the time to dedicate themselves to the management of affairs of state and government. That has time to participate democratically in the planning and implementation of the socialism that we want. The reduction of the work day is more time to rest and live and care for nature and our environment, it is the possibility of creating more sources of employment, with salaries that satisfy the basic food basket. And the president can do it, he has all the tools to carry it out at his hand and the workers also can win this right. For this reason we will also march on the 1st of May, to win the reduction of the working day."
[mg]: "The two acts, the nationalization of SIDOR and the dismissal of the minister, open up a great opportunity to overcome the dispersion of the union movement."
[mg]: [demanding from chavez] "First a general increase in salaries for all workers is necessary. The basic increase announced by President Chavez every year is not enough, today we, together with many others demand a general emergency increase, higher than the indices of inflation. This is an increase that will serve to relieve millions who have not yet been able to discuss their collective contracts, their socio-economic necessities."
[sp]: "The 6-hour day can and should be established by presidential decree, this is an issue not only of work conditions, but a political issue of the highest important. We need a working class with the time to dedicate themselves to the management of affairs of state and government. That has time to participate democratically in the planning and implementation of the socialism that we want. The reduction of the work day is more time to rest and live and care for nature and our environment, it is the possibility of creating more sources of employment, with salaries that satisfy the basic food basket. And the president can do it, he has all the tools to carry it out at his hand and the workers also can win this right. For this reason we will also march on the 1st of May, to win the reduction of the working day."
[mg]: "The two acts, the nationalization of SIDOR and the dismissal of the minister, open up a great opportunity to overcome the dispersion of the union movement."
constructing co-management in venezuela: contradictions along the path (michael lebowitz, october 2005):
Now, some people may be bothered by what I'm going to say now, but I have to tell you that for many workers in capitalist firms the idea of state ownership with decisions made at the top has not been a real alternative. My father was a machinist, and I was never able to convince him. For him, state ownership was just a bigger, more powerful boss. What he wanted was to escape, to get out of the factory.
(...) [what and why co-management] In particular, the point of co-management is to put an end to capitalist exploitation and to create the potential for building a truly human society. When workers are no longer driven by the logic of capital to produce profits for capitalists, the whole nature of work can change. Workers can cooperate with each other to do their jobs well; they can apply their knowledge about better ways to produce to improve production both immediately and in the future; and, they can end the division in the workplace between those who think and those who do -- all because, in co-management, workers know that their activity is not for the enrichment of capitalists. The development of worker decision-making, the process of combining thinking and doing, offers the possibility of all workers developing their capacities and potential. And this is the kind of society, one which encourages the full development of human potential, which the Bolivarian Constitution envisions. Without democratic, participatory, and protagonistic production, people remain the fragmented, crippled human beings that capitalism produces. Democracy in production is a necessary condition for the free development of all; it is an essential element of socialism in the 21st century.
(...) Thus, it stresses that enterprises do not belong to the workers alone -- they are meant to be operated in the interest of the whole society. In other words, co-management is not intended only to remove the self-interested capitalist, leaving in place self-interested workers; rather, it is also meant to change the purpose of productive activity. It means the effort to find ways both to allow for the development of the full potential of workers and also for every member of society, all working people, to be the beneficiaries of co-management.
Now, some people may be bothered by what I'm going to say now, but I have to tell you that for many workers in capitalist firms the idea of state ownership with decisions made at the top has not been a real alternative. My father was a machinist, and I was never able to convince him. For him, state ownership was just a bigger, more powerful boss. What he wanted was to escape, to get out of the factory.
(...) [what and why co-management] In particular, the point of co-management is to put an end to capitalist exploitation and to create the potential for building a truly human society. When workers are no longer driven by the logic of capital to produce profits for capitalists, the whole nature of work can change. Workers can cooperate with each other to do their jobs well; they can apply their knowledge about better ways to produce to improve production both immediately and in the future; and, they can end the division in the workplace between those who think and those who do -- all because, in co-management, workers know that their activity is not for the enrichment of capitalists. The development of worker decision-making, the process of combining thinking and doing, offers the possibility of all workers developing their capacities and potential. And this is the kind of society, one which encourages the full development of human potential, which the Bolivarian Constitution envisions. Without democratic, participatory, and protagonistic production, people remain the fragmented, crippled human beings that capitalism produces. Democracy in production is a necessary condition for the free development of all; it is an essential element of socialism in the 21st century.
(...) Thus, it stresses that enterprises do not belong to the workers alone -- they are meant to be operated in the interest of the whole society. In other words, co-management is not intended only to remove the self-interested capitalist, leaving in place self-interested workers; rather, it is also meant to change the purpose of productive activity. It means the effort to find ways both to allow for the development of the full potential of workers and also for every member of society, all working people, to be the beneficiaries of co-management.
the AFL should stop attacking and learn something (diana barahona, october 2005):
For 40 years the historically dominant Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) had an undemocratic structure and union bureaucrats collaborated with management to quash the struggles of rank-and-file workers. Democratic union activists were fired and even murdered while union bosses looked the other way. Now Venezuela has a new union federation. After the leadership of the CTV joined the business federation to support the 2002 military coup and then led a 63-day economic stoppage to force Chavez's resignation, pro-Chavez labor leaders founded the National Workers' Union (UNT) in April of 2003.
(...) There are an estimated 1.2 million workers affiliated with the UNT, which is the same number the CTV counted in its ranks in 2001. The CTV now has 200,000 workers according to one source.
(...) [attributes it to Chavez] Workers seized the opportunity which presented itself and have both supported Chavez and taken advantage of freedom to organize they never had before, supported by a two-year-old prohibition against laying off low-wage workers.
(...) The CTV was historically aligned with one of the two political parties that ruled Venezuela for 40 years, Democratic Action. Presidents of the CTV were party activists and corruption and cronyism were the order of the day.
(...) Asked about the CTV's loyalties, Linares said, "Initially, yes, it had class consciousness, but over time they became bureaucratic and it disappeared. As a matter of fact, there is a very important fact: you won't find a strike--go to the files of the ILO, where they were very well represented ... and there isn't one legal strike recorded in Venezuela during 40 years at the ILO. And we know that there were strikes. Here there were people injured, there were killings, there were confrontations with the police, with the national guard. The private sector guilds fought for their rights, for money, for pay; they fought for all those kinds of demands. But it wasn't recorded. Why? Because the CTV had to show the world that this was paradise."
(...) The AFL-CIO's American Institute for Free Labor Development, a cold war CIA front, had worked closely with the CTV in the early 1960s to purge it of communists at the same time that the Communist Party was decertified politically.
(...) In 1997, after over a decade of neoliberalism had impoverished the country, the CTV made an agreement with the rightist government of Rafael Caldera whereby it accepted a "reform" of the labor code.
(...) [important: question of the universality of unions, especially critical when the CTV claims autonomy] Two seminal events define modern Venezuelan history: the April 2002 military coup, which lasted 48 hours, and the December 2002-January 2003 economic sabotage, also known as the oil coup. Led by its president, Carlos Ortega, the CTV was a key protagonist of both actions, but rank-and-file workers were never consulted by the union leadership. In any event the rate of unionization in Venezuela has historically been very low: 14 percent of the formal sector comprising companies with five or more employees. So when the coup was reversed by uprisings in the military barracks but also the presence of masses of people in the streets around the presidential palace, workers were among those in the streets demanding the return of Chavez, though not as unions. In fact Linares says the only union that responded as such to restore Chavez to the presidency was his fledgling Passenger Transportation Workers Guild.
(...) In that lapse the CTV, again allied with the ruling class, plunged the country into the devastating oil stoppage which cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and more than $10 billion in economic losses, as oil production was cut from 3.1 million barrels a day to 25,000 barrels. Of the state oil company's (PdVSA) 35,000 permanent employees, 18,000 walked off the job.
(...) [post-oilstoppage, new federation founded] After the oil stoppage was defeated, everyone in the Bolivarian Workers' Force was convinced the time had come for a new federation, and on April 5, 2003, they formed the UNT.
(...) This year's May Day parades provided a graphic picture of the decline of the CTV. There were around half a million supporters at the UNT march while not even 1,000 marched with the CTV.
(...) On the labor front, Golinger documented more than $776,000 in different grants that the Solidarity Center received from the NED specifically to support the CTV between February 2001 and March 2002. The ACILS got another CTV support grant for $116,000 in September 2002, five months after the coup and three months before the oil stoppage. In his history of AIFLD (www.laboreducator.org/darkpast.htm) labor activist Harry Kelber says the grants continued in the same amount every three months until at least March 2004. According to Golinger, the ACILS continues to receive grants in excess of $100,000 annually for its work with the CTV. (http://www.venezuelafoia.info/acils.html)
(...) [very interesting discussion with respect to question of autonomy, and politics] Regarding the oil coup at the end of 2002, the ACILS did not fund the shutdown, although Gacek defends it as a legal collective action. He also points to the fact that 20,000 (actually less than 19,000) of a total 35,000 employees were terminated to imply that the action affected the rank-and-file and was anti-labor, and the CTV has taken the issue to the UN International Labor Organization. But PdVSA relies heavily on contract workers there will be 30,000 temporary positions this year on top of jobs held by employees. Without defending the practice of contracting, the fact is that permanent jobs are reserved for the elite mostly managers, administrators and skilled technicians and these are the people who walked off the job and crippled operations. The position of the government, which is supported by the rank-and-file, is that those fired abandoned their employment for 63 consecutive days, allowing PdVSA to apply section 102 of the Labor Code and terminate them. At any rate strikes in any part of the world may only be called over labor grievances, and Ortega's CTV was demanding the president's resignation. It was not a legal labor action but an illegal political action.
For 40 years the historically dominant Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) had an undemocratic structure and union bureaucrats collaborated with management to quash the struggles of rank-and-file workers. Democratic union activists were fired and even murdered while union bosses looked the other way. Now Venezuela has a new union federation. After the leadership of the CTV joined the business federation to support the 2002 military coup and then led a 63-day economic stoppage to force Chavez's resignation, pro-Chavez labor leaders founded the National Workers' Union (UNT) in April of 2003.
(...) There are an estimated 1.2 million workers affiliated with the UNT, which is the same number the CTV counted in its ranks in 2001. The CTV now has 200,000 workers according to one source.
(...) [attributes it to Chavez] Workers seized the opportunity which presented itself and have both supported Chavez and taken advantage of freedom to organize they never had before, supported by a two-year-old prohibition against laying off low-wage workers.
(...) The CTV was historically aligned with one of the two political parties that ruled Venezuela for 40 years, Democratic Action. Presidents of the CTV were party activists and corruption and cronyism were the order of the day.
(...) Asked about the CTV's loyalties, Linares said, "Initially, yes, it had class consciousness, but over time they became bureaucratic and it disappeared. As a matter of fact, there is a very important fact: you won't find a strike--go to the files of the ILO, where they were very well represented ... and there isn't one legal strike recorded in Venezuela during 40 years at the ILO. And we know that there were strikes. Here there were people injured, there were killings, there were confrontations with the police, with the national guard. The private sector guilds fought for their rights, for money, for pay; they fought for all those kinds of demands. But it wasn't recorded. Why? Because the CTV had to show the world that this was paradise."
(...) The AFL-CIO's American Institute for Free Labor Development, a cold war CIA front, had worked closely with the CTV in the early 1960s to purge it of communists at the same time that the Communist Party was decertified politically.
(...) In 1997, after over a decade of neoliberalism had impoverished the country, the CTV made an agreement with the rightist government of Rafael Caldera whereby it accepted a "reform" of the labor code.
(...) [important: question of the universality of unions, especially critical when the CTV claims autonomy] Two seminal events define modern Venezuelan history: the April 2002 military coup, which lasted 48 hours, and the December 2002-January 2003 economic sabotage, also known as the oil coup. Led by its president, Carlos Ortega, the CTV was a key protagonist of both actions, but rank-and-file workers were never consulted by the union leadership. In any event the rate of unionization in Venezuela has historically been very low: 14 percent of the formal sector comprising companies with five or more employees. So when the coup was reversed by uprisings in the military barracks but also the presence of masses of people in the streets around the presidential palace, workers were among those in the streets demanding the return of Chavez, though not as unions. In fact Linares says the only union that responded as such to restore Chavez to the presidency was his fledgling Passenger Transportation Workers Guild.
(...) In that lapse the CTV, again allied with the ruling class, plunged the country into the devastating oil stoppage which cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and more than $10 billion in economic losses, as oil production was cut from 3.1 million barrels a day to 25,000 barrels. Of the state oil company's (PdVSA) 35,000 permanent employees, 18,000 walked off the job.
(...) [post-oilstoppage, new federation founded] After the oil stoppage was defeated, everyone in the Bolivarian Workers' Force was convinced the time had come for a new federation, and on April 5, 2003, they formed the UNT.
(...) This year's May Day parades provided a graphic picture of the decline of the CTV. There were around half a million supporters at the UNT march while not even 1,000 marched with the CTV.
(...) On the labor front, Golinger documented more than $776,000 in different grants that the Solidarity Center received from the NED specifically to support the CTV between February 2001 and March 2002. The ACILS got another CTV support grant for $116,000 in September 2002, five months after the coup and three months before the oil stoppage. In his history of AIFLD (www.laboreducator.org/darkpast.htm) labor activist Harry Kelber says the grants continued in the same amount every three months until at least March 2004. According to Golinger, the ACILS continues to receive grants in excess of $100,000 annually for its work with the CTV. (http://www.venezuelafoia.info/acils.html)
(...) [very interesting discussion with respect to question of autonomy, and politics] Regarding the oil coup at the end of 2002, the ACILS did not fund the shutdown, although Gacek defends it as a legal collective action. He also points to the fact that 20,000 (actually less than 19,000) of a total 35,000 employees were terminated to imply that the action affected the rank-and-file and was anti-labor, and the CTV has taken the issue to the UN International Labor Organization. But PdVSA relies heavily on contract workers there will be 30,000 temporary positions this year on top of jobs held by employees. Without defending the practice of contracting, the fact is that permanent jobs are reserved for the elite mostly managers, administrators and skilled technicians and these are the people who walked off the job and crippled operations. The position of the government, which is supported by the rank-and-file, is that those fired abandoned their employment for 63 consecutive days, allowing PdVSA to apply section 102 of the Labor Code and terminate them. At any rate strikes in any part of the world may only be called over labor grievances, and Ortega's CTV was demanding the president's resignation. It was not a legal labor action but an illegal political action.
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