New union challenges bureaucrats' union before ILO

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following article is a description, of mixed value in my opinion,
of the challenge to the old bureaucratic union federation in Venezuela
by a fast-gtrowing new federation based on the masses of workers who
have become a powerful base of support for the Bolivarian revolution

Since soon after the Venezuelan revolution of 1958, the Venbezuelan
labor movement was taken over by union bureaucrats  sponsored AFL-CIO
attached to the two-party bourgeois electoral system, modelled on that
in the US, that developed in the country. When the Chavez government
took power over the opposition of these bureaucrats, it attempted at
first to administratively impose democratic elections on the unions or
even to establish a new government-sponsored union federation.

The AFL-CIO backed federation, led by Jaime Ortega, sponsored a strike
in the oil industry that helped set the stage for a military coup,
which was initially supported by the Ortega bureaucracy, in April
2002.  The working masses, organized in Bolivarian Circles and other
mass organizations, defeated the coup with the support of substantial
sections of the army.

In the fall, the union bureaucrats joined the employers in a national
strike aimed at toppling the regime.  It was during the workers' and
popular resistance to this strike that a new federation, based on the
broad opposition to the proimperialist policy in the old unions as
well as on people not previously organized, began to take hold,
particularly by organizing workers to take control of production and
workplaces to defeat the boss-bureaucrat strike.  Now it appears
likely that the new union has grown stronger then the U.S. imperialist
supported union movement, which has been defeated not by government
legislation but in battle.
Fred Feldman