>The old guard unionists had opposed a December 2000 referendum that
>was passed by 67 percent of those who voted, and resulted in direct
>election of union leaders. But when the union elections were held, the
>old guard won-and the Chavez government refused to recognize the
>results. Supporters of Chavez instead formed a new confederation, the
>Bolivarian Workers' Force (FBT), which gained some limited support
>among workers.
This is the more interesting story of the Chavez-labor conflict, especially coming from a writer associated with union democracy groups in the US. Chavez and the government are management in the context of the state-owned oil company and had sought to control the leadership of the unions at the state oil companies. He pushed through a referendum for direct election of the union leadership (not a bad thing in itself) but then found that the leadership elected by the workers were still opposed to him. So he as the management sought to create a government-controlled union to undermine those democratic union results.
I am somewhat sympathetic to Chavez, since his rheotric sounds nice, but his actions have been either symbolic or in the case of the attack on the Venezualan unions, authoritarian and anti-union. The AFL-CIO has done very good work highlighting the attacks on leftwing unions in Columbia; why shouldn't they be defending the rights of independent unions in Venezuala?
Even the term "coup" is a bit complicated, since what is the difference between a coup and a "peoples revolution," since many leftists support the latter but dislike the former, even though the difference in less in process than political leanings. October 1917 was in substance a coup in many ways against Kerensky's government and it set aside recent elections that went against the Bolsheviks. More contemporaneously, most leftists were rooting for the Ecuadorean mass uprising a year or so ago. The mass mobilization that forced the neoliberal government in Argentina out of office last fall was also applauded by many leftists.
A mass mobilization that forces a government to resign from office, even when "assisted" by some military pressure, is hardly outside the realm of what many on the left have supported over the years. What was interesting about the Venezualan case is that this mass mobilization happened, the military pressure helped force Chavez out, then the business elite part of the uprising essentially tried to enact a second coup against the rest of the mass uprising by putting in only their allies into government, not a broad based replacement government, and sought to abolish all other democratic institutions. At that point, the CTV and other groups turned against the business elite and Chavez was restored to office.
Even Chavez admits that he made some serious mistakes in alienating large chunks of the population and sees the roots of the uprising/coup in his own mistakes, not in some artificial outside conspiracy (even if it may have been assisted). Considering he had himself tried to mount a coup against a previous government, he himself may have more sympathy for the blurred line between popular movement and coup than some others condemning his opponents may have.
I have yet to see a good account of the conflict over control of the state oil company and the fight over democracy and independence of the unions that lay at the heart of this whole recent conflict. Merely labelling the CTV 'rightwing' and thereby justifying Chavez's anti-union program against them is no more valid than the traditional rightwing policies of supporting the destructions of any union labelled "leftwing" in the third world.
-- Nathan Newman