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| Dan Clore... |
 Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:10 pm |
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=85298
FAI: Venezuela's Bolivarian government against union autonomy
Infoshop News: Orlando Chirino, a revolutionary Venezuelan labor leader,
has recently denounced the Bolivarian government as "anti-worker and
anti-union."
It would be difficult to accuse Chirino of being a "golpista" or an
"ally of imperialism." In the year 2002 he condemned the coup,
mobilizing to defend the state oil industry from the work stoppage
driven by management leadership. In each occasion presented him, he
supported and accompanied workers' attempts to control factories closed
by their bosses. He is rooted among the workers and was made a leader in
the Union Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT), the labor union promoted by
his own President Chavez.
If Orlando has been part of the so-called Bolivarian movement for many
years, what has happened in 2009 to get him to make these kinds of
statements about the government he once defended?
*
The main part of the answer is: because Chirino is an iron
defender of the unions' autonomy.
The attempt to control the workers' movement from above began as soon as
Hugo Chavez was elected President of Venezuela. In 1999 a clash began
with the traditional Confederacion de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), a
labor union created in 1947 by the influence of Accion Democratica (AD),
and changed, since 1959, into the main negotiator of the labor policies
developed by the state. Nevertheless, in spite of Chavismo's questions
about the irregularities and vices of this organization, in the absence
of their own labor movement, they participated in its internal elections
in October 2001. The Bolivarian candidate, Aristobulo Isturiz, was
defeated by the AD candidate Carlos Ortega, who became the president of
the CTV.
A year and a half later, repeating the same history of the CTV, the
government created by decree what it called "the real labor union": the
Union Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT), which quickly reproduced the
corruption that it claimed to fight. One Marxist organization that
participated in its foundation, Opcion Obrera, says it more clearly than
us: "The UNT was born under agreements from above, and was ridden for a
show for the rank and file; few authentic union leaders had power in
it... [3] The UNT was born with governmental protection, which lifted it
up.The criticized "perks" of the old CTV unionism are now granted to the
leaders of the UNT, who are staunch supporters of the government."
Paradoxically, before the limited acceptance of the new labor union
among the mass of workers, and the resistance of some sectors of the
union to their cooptation, the Bolivarian power promoted new
organizations in order to displace the UNT, as is the case of the Frente
Socialista Bolivariano de los Trabajadores (FSBT).
A second milestone, justified with the argument of weakening the CTV
bureaucracy, was the promotion of the so-called "union parallelism" from
the seat of government, creating unions artificially, from outside, in
the principal industries of the country. In this way Chavismo would be
able to publicize that with almost 700 registered unions, the Bolivarian
process has promoted the organization of workers like nothing has
before. However, this rise of the unions did not mean their greater
influence on labor policies.
*
One indicator is the end of the discussion of collective
contracts in the public sector, counting 243 expired, paralyzed and
unsigned contracts at the end of 2007, in a sector that in May 2009
employs 2,244,413 people, a quarter of those contracted by the private
sector.
The decisions on salaries, labor conditions, and labor law are made
unilaterally by the institutions of the state, after which they are
mechanically ratified by the spokespersons of the UNT. In addition to
the fragmentation and loss of capacity for pressure and negotiation,
union parallelism has exacerbated the disputes for control of those
workplaces in the areas of oil and construction - in which the union can
place 70 out of 100 recruits - which have increased the cases of
assassination of union leaders and workers in inter-union strife.
Between June 2008 and when this text was written, there have been 59
murders that spread with the greatest impunity.
A third element is the creation of the Partido Socialista Unido de
Venezuela (PSUV), a partisan body that, in President's own words, should
absorb all organizations that support the Bolivarian process, including
the unions. A few defended the independence of the workers'
organizations, but dissent from the official line was not tolerated. In
March 2007 Chavez affirmed in a speech "The unions should not be
autonomous ... we must end with that," which was followed by successive
declarations in the same line, reaching the zenith in march of 2009,
when after ridiculing the demands of the basic industries of Guayana --
the biggest industrial belt of the country -- he threatened to use the
police to crush any attempts at demonstrations or strikes there. For a
revolutionary like Orlando Chirino, it was unbearable, stating at the
time that it "constituted a declaration of war against the working class."
Various initiatives are currently being developed to increase control
over the country's workers. For one thing, laws have been passed that
limit and criminalize protest, requiring people to report periodically
to the courts, in addition to prohibiting them from participation in
meetings and demonstrations, such as occurred this past July 13 to 5
union leaders of the oil refinery of El Palito, in the west of the
country. According to figures from spokespersons of the affected
communities, at least 2,200 people would be currently subject to the
scheme. It must be brought out that, curiously, more than 80% are part
of the movement to support the national government. This detail is
significant because since 2008 has come increasing social unrest in the
face of the miseries and limitations of material life for workers on the
ground. The protests for social rights have displaced the mobilizations
for political rights, that set the scene during the years 2002 and 2006.
The failure to meet the expectations generated by Bolivarian rhetoric,
the weakening of patronage networks by declining oil revenues and the
stagnation and decline of effective social policies, known as
"missions," have catalyzed the accumulated unrest in the absence of
profound transformations that significantly improve the quality of life
for the majority of the country. Another initiative underway, again by
decree from above, is the replacement of unions with "workers' councils"
for discussing work conditions in companies, a proposal entered in the
reform of the Organic Labor Law (LOT), a regulation that has been
discussed in secret in the National Assembly, an executive that is
promoted around the world as a champion of "participatory democracy."
Other laws, that seem to have no connection to the world of work, have
also been restricting workers' rights. That's the case with the reformed
Law of Land Transit, which in its article 74 prohibits the closure of
streets to obstruct pedestrian and vehicle traffic, which has been the
historical practice of protest by the popular sectors, especially in
demanding their labor rights. Meanwhile, on August 15 an Organic Law of
Education was passed, which has provoked protest by opposition groups
for its secularism and for establishing strict regulations for private
education institutions. However, what this center-right and
social-democratic opposition does not question, much less Chavismo, are
the limitations to the right of association, unionization, and
collective bargaining, which is not guaranteed. One sign of the
reactionary character of the order is section 5.f of the first
transitional provision, which states that teachers and professors engage
in serious misconduct "by physical aggression, speech, and other forms
of violence" against their superiors. To make matters worse, the fifth
transitional provision regulates the use of scabs "for reasons of proven
necessity" in order to break strikes and work stoppages, a practice that
has become habitual in so-called "Bolivarian Venezuela." In addition,
the Chavista movement has driven an onslaught against the media outlets
that don't accommodate the government, whose principle motivation is the
visibility of the conflicts and protests that they provide, in contrast
with the scarce coverage of the state and para-state media,
self-declared "alternative and community," but without editorial and
financial independence of any kind.
The role of Venezuelan anarchists in this moment of fracture of
Bolivarian hegemony is to participate, accompany, and radicalize the
conflicts, from below and with the people, and in this way to stimulate
the recovery of the belligerent autonomy of the social movements. They
must also become actively involved in the construction of a different,
revolutionary alternative to the inter-bourgeois conflict for the
control of the oil revenues that has engulfed the political scene in
recent years, fighting the Bolivarian bourgeoisie in power with the same
impetus as the potential re-articulations of those political parties it
has displaced.
In this way we walk, as always, without giving any concession to power
and having our old values (self-management, direct action,
anticapitalism and mutual aid, among others) as a bright horizon.
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20091023155935329
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
speaking to each other about their condition and their
aspirations _without intermediaries_."
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_ |
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