BY MIKE LEBOWITZ
There was a lot of confusion outside Venezuela during the last year about what has been happening there. Some people have asked, "How could progressives and trade unionists support the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez given the dedicated opposition of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV)? How, when there was a general strike, could we side with the government rather than workers?".
Today, there should be no confusion. The CTV has been exposed as an arm of the Fedecamaras, the employers' association, with which it has been allied in the April 2002 coup and in the so-called general strike early this year.
It was a strange general strike, indeed. One in which workers in the oil industry, electricity, transport, public sector and other basic industries kept working and management walked out. A strike in which workers were laid off by the big local and multinational conglomerates, but were promised that they would receive full pay for the period of the lock-out (only now to discover that this promissory note was dependent on the companies defeating the Chavez government).
Make no mistake about it, this "general strike" was a capitalist offensive, supported by the US and its clients, to bring down the pro-poor Chavez government. Its immediate effect was an enormous blow to Venezuela's economy because of the loss of oil revenues for several months following the shut-down of PDVSA, the national oil company, by its managers. There were also losses in tax revenues that resulted from the lockouts and a tax strike by the companies. The resulting "opposition deficit" will make this year a difficult one under any circumstances but particularly so as the government attempts to meet the enormous needs of the Venezuelan people.
However, a longer term effect of this offensive by Venezuela's capitalist oligarchy has been a development of the political consciousness of the poor (most of them in the informal sector) and organised workers. There is a mood among workers of self-confidence — one which emerged when the workers in PDVSA ran the company by themselves after management and technicians abandoned it.
In workplace after workplace, workers are talking about taking over and running their enterprises as cooperatives. PDVSA itself now has two representatives of its workers on its management board, and an associated petrochemicals firm is being run as a cooperative. This process is just beginning, but it looks like capital has lost one of its major weapons, its ability to threaten a capital strike — rather than giving in, Venezuelan workers are moving in!
On March 29, a new labour federation was formed. The National Union of Workers (UNT). The new federation emerged out of a long process of discussion which began last July among the Bolivarian Workers' Force, the workers' movement that is aligned with the Chavez government, the Bolivarian Circles, grassroots organisations among the poor, and independent trade unions (both in and outside the CTV) that are not "Chavist" but which support the general direction of the government.
At the core of these discussions was the question of how autonomous the new federation would be in relation to the government. After the last capitalist offensive, the matter has been resolved — the UNT will be independent, class-oriented, democratic and revolutionary.
At its formation, the UNT already represents more workers than are nominally represented by the CTV, which will lose any credibility it has had outside Venezuela as its member unions leave. (Indeed, the petroleum workers' union, from which the current head of CTV Carlos Ortega came, is itself a key union in the UNT.)
Of course, capital does not give up so easily. Through the CIA and its various fronts, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (which financed the American Center for International Labor Solidarity's support for the CTV), Venezuelan opponents of Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" will attempt to maintain the support of international labour federations such as the US AFL-CIO, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the International Labour Organisation.
This is why it is especially important now for progressives and trade unionists to inform themselves of what is happening in Venezuela and in the Venezuelan workers' movement.
[Abridged from ZNet, visit <http://www.zmag.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 16, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.