There are signs of a revival in worker organising in Venezuela, but it is not clear whether it will be independent of Chávez.
Last week a “unification commission” of the two major factions within the UNT union federation met to organise elections for the leadership, which are long overdue. Leaders of the pro-Chávez Colectivo de Trabajadores en Revolución (CTR) and the more independent Corriente Clasista Unitaria Revolucionaria y Autónoma (CCURA) said they want to organise elections later this year.
The UNT was formed in 2003 but split in May last year between those who wanted to elect a leadership before the presidential elections in December and those who wanted to put all their efforts into Chávez’s campaign. Since then, the UNT has been effectively paralysed, despite facing further attacks on their autonomy from Chávez.
Another workers’ organisation, the Revolutionary Front of Workers in Factories Occupied and under Co-management (Freteco) held a conference at the end of June. The meeting brought together representatives of factories under cogestión, such as metal parts firm Inaf, oil industry valves firm Inveval, Sanitarios Maracay bathroom makers, textile factories Franelas Gotcha and Sel-Fex, tomato processing plant Tomatera Caigua and the sugar mill Central Azucarera Motatán. Also present were workers from INTEVEP (the technology division of state-owned oil company PDVSA) and from the Socialist Front of Workers of Caracas Electricity (EdC), which was recently nationalised.
In some cases, these firms are stated owned by managed by elected factory councils. In others, workers participate in more conventional management structures. The experience is certainly important. However the politics of those involved is not consistent. For example the CMR, the political group aligned with Socialist Appeal in Britain, argues for workers control at the same time as joining Chávez’s new bourgeois party. It takes the dynamic of worker independence in the workers’ control movement and channels it into wretched bourgeois politics.
