[R-G] Venezuela's Labor Movement at the Crossroads

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

For a long time, in the imagination of the Left (at least till the
Sixties), the dominant image of proletariat was that of wage workers,
especially industrial workers, in the formal sector, and it is this
sector of workers who were most often thought of as agents of
revolutionary transformation.  In the history of revolutions, though,
it looks as if the world has moved from the age of predominantly
peasant revolutions to that of largely lumpen-proletarian revolutions
(from Iran's Islamic Revolution to the Bolivarian Revolution).  The
only time industrial workers were at the center of a revolutionary
challenge may have been May 1968 in France, but even there the
ideological leadership that left the largest stamp on popular memory
came from students.  Where wage workers in the formal sector are well
organized and relatively numerous, politics goes social democratic*
rather than revolutionary.  That is probably because this sector of
workers has more bargaining power than other sectors, so where they
are strong, they can establish many reforms and universalize some of
their benefits, making revolution unnecessary to meet a majority's
most urgent needs.

* At best, that is.  At worst, this sector of workers end up
supporting formerly social democratic but now neoliberal political
parties.  The most obvious case is the United States and the United
Kingdom, where lately all tendencies of the Left, from the Center-Left
to the Left-Left, have simultaneously suffered defeats.

<http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3398>
Venezuela's Labor Movement at the Crossroads

April 29th 2008, by Kiraz Janicke & Federico Fuentes - Venezuelanalysis.com

First came the decision by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on April 9
to re-nationalize the Sidor steel plant—privatised by a pre-Chavez
government in 1997—after a long worker's struggle.

This was followed shortly by the call from Bolivarian Socialist
Workers Force's (FSBT), a faction with in the pro-Chavez National
Union of Workers (UNT), to split away to form a new national
federation.

Two days later, labor minister Jose Ramon Rivero, a member of the
FSBT, who was accused by Sidor workers of opposing their struggle, was
replaced by National Assembly Vice-President and former Venezuelan
Communist Party (PCV) member Roberto Hernandez, now a United Socialist
Party of Venezuela (PSUV) member.

These events have once again brought to the fore the question of the
role of workers in Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution, whose
participation as an organized class has been sporadic at best, in this
process aimed at constructing 'Socialism of the 21st Century.'

Neoliberal unions

Prior to Chavez's election in 1998, Venezuela's political system had
been dominated for 40 years by two traditional parties: the Christian
democratic COPEI and Democratic Action (AD), a social democratic
party. The Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), the main trade
union federation, although having emerged out of workers struggle, had
quickly become subordinated to AD, and by the eighties and nineties
became a bastion of support for the policies of consecutive neoliberal
governments.

In the context of an emerging wave of privatizations, increased
casualization, spiraling unemployment, and 80% poverty, Chavez was
elected president on an anti-neoliberal platform in 1998. His election
not only put a stop to further planned privatizations (which included
the petroleum and electricity sector) but ushered in a new era of
state policies directed at empowering the poor and exploited, causing
a profound impact on the workers movement.

Speaking to unionists from the industrial town of Valencia during a
visit to Venezuela in 2005, they recounted to us what the Chavez
presidency had meant for workers. "If you do a survey of all the
companies, in all of them are new groups of [unionists] that have
sprouted, because they have won referendums, because the new laws
[introduced by President Hugo Chavez's government] protect them"
explained Luis Flugo, one of the new layer of union activists, whose
union at the time was involved in a 9 month struggle against the
Aseven (KR) soft-drink company.

"That is what has helped take the blindfold off and see that [workers]
can win their rights." The new laws enabled workers to hold
referendums in their workplace to decide who would oversee their
collective contract and opened the space for a new layer of militants
to rise up from the ranks.

Whilst the new laws and government policy provided tools for workers'
struggle, it was struggle from below that profoundly shook up the
labor movement. In the context of the open collaboration of the CTV
with the business federation, Fedecamaras, in a wave of rightwing
anti-government protests from the end of 2001, and its participation
in the failed coup attempt against Chavez in April 2002, a national
gathering of pro-revolution unionists in September that year, voted
against breaking with the CTV to form a new labor federation, and to
continue to fight from within to win leadership of the CTV.

New Federation

It would take the experience of the bosses' lockout (once again with
the open collaboration of the CTV), initiated December 2002, for
workers, organized as a class, to enter into the arena of the
revolution. In response to the wave of factory shutdowns, in
particular the management shutdown and sabotage of Venezuela's state
oil company PDVSA, workers moved in and began to take control of their
factories, including restarting the oil and electrical sectors, which
were crucial to breaking the bosses' lockout.

This situation led to a definitive break with the CTV and the attempt
by militant unionists to form a new revolutionary labor federation.
The National Union of Workers was born on April 5, 2003. Diana
Barahona, writing for CounterPunch on October 24, 2005, noted that
whilst the UNT's first congress "left structural issues [essential for
democratic unionism] unresolved…there was general agreement over
principles and the plan of action."

Spurred on by a government discourse – backed by the constitution - of
support for worker participation and co-management in industry and a
government moratorium on lay-offs of lowest paid workers, UNT
affiliation grew dramatically, representing 76.5% of all collective
agreements signed in 2003-2004, rapidly overtaking the CTV as
Venezuela's principal labor federation.

Despite this growth, unionisation remains only slightly above 20% of
the formal work force, while 47% of workers are in the so-called
informal sector, according to the latest figures from the National
Institute of Statistics.

At its high point in 2005 some one million workers participated in a
UNT-organized May Day march in Caracas under the banner of
"Co-management is revolution," and "Venezuelan workers are building
Bolivarian Socialism."

"Factory closed, factory occupied and run by the workers" became the
catch cry of both Chavez and the union movement, with a list of 800
factories that had been shut down across the country earmarked to be
taken over.

Divisions and setbacks

However, three years later only a handful have been recuperated, and
in a number of important cases, worker's co-management has been rolled
back or defeated altogether.

Today, many unionists agree that the labor movement is more dispersed
and fragmented than it has ever been in the last 9 years of Chavez
government. A number of factors have contributed to this situation
including bitter divisions within the union movement itself,
conflicting views over the experience of co-management, and issues
such as union autonomy and democracy.

Since its inception, internal debates and conflict have wracked the
UNT. Lack of internal structures and horizontalism, perhaps necessary
at the start but never redressed, lead to the UNT have 21 national
coordinators. Elections were continually postponed due to factional
wrangling, and with political differences and personal rivalries
increasingly dominating the federation it reached a point where each
current began to act independently of each other, though all in the
name of the UNT.

This lack of structure led to the Communist Party of Venezuela-aligned
United Confederation of Venezuelan Workers deciding to remain outside
the UNT.

By the time of its second congress in 2006, five major political
currents had emerged: the FSBT (initially the Bolivarian Worker's
Force, which predates the UNT as a current within the CTV) led by
Oswaldo Vera; the Alfredo Maneiro current, whose key leaders included
Ramon Machuca in the steel industry and Franklin Rondon in the public
sector; the Collective of Workers in Revolution (CTR), lead by Marcela
Maspero; the United Revolutionary Autonomous Class Current (C-CURA),
headed by Orlando Chirinos and Stalin Perez Borges; and the smaller
Union Autonomy, lead by Orlando Castillo.

While the FSBT and the Alfredo Manerio current involved leaders of
some of the largest union federations, predominantly in the public
service and state-owned industry where they worked to maintain
control, the CTR and C-CURA focused on promoting the discussion of
co-mangement and on winning the new emerging unions, generally in the
private sector.

The situation came to a head in an acrimonious dispute at the 2006
congress, ostensibly over the timing of elections, but in reality
masking personal and ideological differences including over how to
relate to the Chavez government.

CCURA, which appeared to have a majority at the congress, called for
immediate elections while the other factions argued they should be
postponed until after the 2006 presidential elections so as not to
distract from Chavez's presidential campaign. The congress ended in
disarray and since then, the UNT has effectively ceased functioning as
a national federation despite a number of strong regional sections.

In addition to these divisions, another feature of the union movement,
particularly striking in the context of the radical social changes
occurring in Venezuela, is the lack of any political strategy aimed at
deepening the Bolivarian process towards the construction of a
socialism and genuine worker's control.

This is reflected in the overwhelmingly economist nature of their
demands. As Canadian Marxist academic Michael Lebowitz puts it, "Their
whole orientation towards higher wages and their tendency to act like
a labor aristocracy in a society where so many people are poor."

The UNT, like the CTV before it has largely avoided any attempt to
organize workers in the informal sector, focusing overwhelmingly on
the demands of the most privileged layer of Venezuelan workers. This
has lead to a disjuncture between the organized trade union movement
and the masses of poor Venezuelans who form the backbone of the
Bolivarian revolution.

New political developments

New political developments in 2007 such as the formation of the United
Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) (which unites many pro-Chavez
groups and hundreds of thousands of Chavistas), Chavez's proposed
constitutional reforms aimed at "opening the path to socialism," and
the appointment of FSBT leader Jose Ramon Rivero to the position of
Labor Minister lead to further debates within the union movement.

While almost all the currents agreed with the necessity to join the
PSUV, the CCURA current split over this question. Pointing to comments
by Chavez against "union autonomy," a wing of CCURA lead by Chirinos
rejected participation in the PSUV as it moved towards a more hostile
position in relation to the government, including calling for a
spoiled vote in the constitutional reform referendum of December 2,
2007.

The majority of CCURA, however, voted to go into the PSUV, forming the
Socialist Tide current, led by Stalin Perez Borges.

Growing conflicts between labor and the state have also impacted on
the debate over how the labor movement should relate to the
government. As momentum built for greater worker participation,
sections of the state bureaucracy seeking to protect their own
interests began to actively undermine the process.

One example occurred in the state-owned CADAFE electricity company.
After a long struggle, winning the right to workers participation in
their collective contract, and establishing workers committees to make
it a reality, management moved to crush any real participation,
limiting it to decisions over what Christmas decorations would fill
the halls of administration offices.

This pattern has been repeated in many different spheres of Venezuelan
society - a push by the ranks, in alliance with Chavez, for popular
power has encountered the resistance of sectors of the state
bureaucracy who do not want to cede control. These vested interests
intersect with the right wing of the Chavista camp, which has strong
institutional weight and seeks to slow down the revolutionary process.

This conflict has led to a debate over what role workers should have
in running the economy, with some supporting a more passive role while
others demand more active worker participation and control.

In response, the Revolutionary Front of Workers in Co-managed
Factories (FRETECO) was formed, grouping together many of the workers
in the handful of worker-run factories that exist.

The conflict between labor and the state increased dramatically with
the appointment of Rivero as Labor Minister. He intervened into
disputes to advance his own current, the FSBT, or even sided with the
bosses, as with the case of Sanatarios Maracay, an occupied ceramics
factory where workers say he intervened to set up a parallel union and
hand back the factory to the boss.

The situation intensified in January this year with the Sidor dispute.
After more than a year of struggle for a collective contract the Sidor
workers found themselves in a situation of open confrontation not only
against management but also with the policies of the local "Chavista"
governor, Fransisco Rangel Gomez, and the labor minister, who tried to
impose a referendum on the company's final pay offer. At one point the
workers were brutally repressed with teargas and rubber bullets by the
National Guard and the local police.

The labor minister also slandered the SIDOR workers, claiming they
were "counter-revolutionary" and falsely alleged they had supported
the boss's lockout of Dec 2002, when in fact, they had heroically
seized control of the plant to help break it.

Chavez eventually overrode Rivero and sent in Vice-President Ramon
Carrizalez to settle the dispute and announced on April 9 the
government's decision to nationalize the plant.

"This is a government that protects workers and will never take the
side of a transnational company," Carrizalez said.

Reinvigorated union movement

This act, long demanded by the SIDOR workers, has reinvigorated the
labor movement, as Marcos García, a coordinator of public sector union
FENTRASEP explained, "The workers movement, with the triumph of the
SIDOR workers and the people of Guayana, who achieved the
nationalization of the principal steel producer in Latin America, has
produced a change throughout the country."

In this context, Rivero launched a public attack on the UNT, telling
the April 11 edition of Venezuelan regional daily Notitarde "the
National Union of Workers does not represent the spirit of the
Venezuelan revolutionary process."

Then on April 13, Rivero and National Assembly Deputy and coordinator
of the FSBT Osvaldo Vera announced the formation of a new national
union federation calling on unions to disaffiliate from the UNT,
claiming to have the backing of 17 of the most important sectoral
federations.

However Chavez, while addressing 300,000 supporters on the sixth
anniversary of the 2002 coup on the same day, praised the SIDOR
workers and called on the working class to assume a "protagonistic
role" in the revolution. "The working class is fundamental to any
socialist revolution," he insisted.

In what appears to be a clear repudiation of the rightwing role of
Rivero in the SIDOR dispute and his public support for splitting the
UNT he was sacked two days later and replaced by former Communist
Party member and National Assembly vice-president Roberto Hernandez.
The new minister has called for unity and proposed a union constituent
assembly to re-found the labor movement, which has the backing of
Socialist Tide, C-CURA and the CTR.

One important question will be what happens in Sidor: will the
creative spirit of the Sidor workers in struggle be unleashed through
active participation in the running of the company, or will they be
relegated back to simply fighting for a better collective contract,
like the electricity workers before them?

However, broader questions for the union movement center on whether it
will be able to overcome its serious divisions, which could
potentially deepen with the call for a new alternative federation to
the UNT.

Undoubtedly the UNT, at the very least, needs to be refounded, but
this requires a dialogue between the different currents, and more
importantly, a democratic process involving rank and file workers in
order to create a genuine revolutionary trade union movement that can
advance the Bolivarian revolution towards socialism.

-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>