VenEconomy: Unions Create a Détente Zone in Venezuela

The Chávez administration, with its totalitarian appetites run riot since February 15, has wanted to lay everything waste, from constitutional rights to citizen freedoms. Among the rights and freedoms that the President has sought to abolish are having a decent job that does not depend on party membership or supporting a given ideology and the right to independent trade union representation that fights for workers’ rights.

This Thursday, for the first time in more than seven years, leaders of trade union groups sympathetic to both the government and the opposition joined forces in what could be interpreted as a détente in the conflictive labor situation that is brewing in the country, and the Labor Solidarity Movement or MSL was formed. This movement seeks to create a united front to defend the rights of workers in both the public and private sectors. And while it does not include the majority of the country’s trade unions, for the moment, it is a starting point for achieving a united front while allowing for diversity.

Given the climate of labor conflict that is brewing, it is most timely that trade union leaders of all political stripes are sitting down at the same table to discuss which is the best path to take to achieve a true defense of the working class, setting aside political interests, desires to hold on to office or indulgence towards individualistic hegemonic projects.

According to some members of the MSL, this movement has come about as a result of pressure from the grassroots trade unions, which are seeing how the benefits they have won for their members are being eroded.

According to comments made by many of its most conspicuous spokesmen, as far as the Chávez administration is concerned, the importance of the trade union struggle is not simply socioeconomic benefits or labor rights or even people’s legitimate aspirations to a better standard of living. What is essential for Chávez and his cohorts is the ideologizing and indoctrination of the worker (read deadening of awareness) so that he blindly follows the orders of the “commander” and supports his project; in other words, a worker and a trade unionism as styled in Fidel’s Cuba.

However, there are incipient signs that Chávez has taken the wrong path this time. His eagerness to control did not take account of Venezuelans’ idiosyncrasies. The majority of the opinion polls agree that the aspirations of the Venezuelan worker is to have an equal opportunity to get a job, to have a decent job with fair pay, and that this job will allow him to improve his social status and the standard of living of his family. The majority are against donning a uniform, joining a party or voting for candidates imposed by the powers that be as a prerequisite to getting a job.

There is still much to be done and the acid test will be in the discussions over the innumerable labor contracts to come.

There are also many barriers to overcome, the most important being the renewal of an obsolete, tired leadership that is clinging on to posts in the highest echelons of the trade union movement and surviving the attacks that the government will eventually make on any trade union leaders who act independently, trying to criminalize them and put them out of commission.

VenEconomy has been a leading provider of consultancy on financial, political and economic data in Venezuela since 1982.
http://www.laht.com/index.asp