Open
World Conference of Workers
In Defense of Trade Union Independence & Democratic Rights
AFL-CIO & Venezuela: Fred Hirsch Excerpts and CalFed Resolution
2004
(Following are excerpts from an article that appeared in the Fall 2004
issue of Social Policy.)
VENEZUELA: A PEOPLE FIRM AGAINST EMPIRE
By Fred Hirsch
Our delegation of trade unionists was in Venezuela only five days. ...
In that time, I was eager to communicate, in any way possible, to the
workers in the huddled hillside barrios surrounding Caracas that my union,
the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council (San Jose, CA), the San Francisco
Labor Council AFL-CIO, the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council AFL-CIO and
the California Labor Federation AFL-CIO, representing 2.4 million members
each took unanimous action to pass a resolution entitled "Build Unity
and Trust Among Workers Worldwide." The resolution calls for ending a
long pattern of AFL-CIO use of federal money for meddling in the sovereign
internal labor affairs of other nations in support of White House
policies. Most of that federal money comes through the National Endowment
for Democracy (NED), established under Ronald Reagan and funded by
Congress. The resolution calls upon the national AFL-CIO "to fully
account for what was done in Chile and Venezuela and other countries where
similar roles may have been played in our name, to renounce such policies
and practices..., describe, country by country, exactly what activities it
may still be engaged in abroad with funds paid by government agencies and
renounce any such ties that could compromise our authentic credibility and
the trust of workers here and abroad and that would make us paid agents of
government or of the forces of corporate economic globalization"
The original resolution indicated that the AFL-CIO had been a bagman for
the policies of George W. Bush, funding and working with the Venezuelan
groups which unleashed the failed coup on April 11, 2002. The same groups
fomented a crippling oil industry shutdown and then the August 15, 2004
referendum to overthrow the Hugo Chavez government.
We carried a supply of envelopes labeled "For Your Immediate
Attention." Each contained the original "Unity and Trust"
resolution, the version passed by the California Labor Federation, and an
introductory letter by Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, Executive Officer of the
South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council. In part, Ms. Ellis Lamkins wrote:
"We believe that international solidarity must come from the heart of
workers in one country to the heart of workers in another...
Workers...should never allow themselves to become agents of government -
some might say, agents of empire... We ask you, in your unions and
confederations... to send messages to our national AFL-CIO urging them to
seriously consider and enact the changes called for by the California
Labor Federation which represents more than one sixth of the members of
the AFL-CIO nationally." ...
The first attempt to reverse Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution was on April
11, 2002. Supported by key military people and private media monopolists
close to George Bush, conspirators pulled off a short lived coup.
Supported by leaders of the CTV, they kidnapped Chavez, suspended the
Constitution, dissolved the Supreme Court and National Assembly and
installed one man rule under the head of the Federation of Chambers of
Commerce (FEDECAMARAS). Eighteen people were reportedly killed in events
leading to the coup. Shortly before the takeover, coup conspirators
visited Washington. While the forty eight hour "regime change"
was universally denounced by other governments, the Bush administration
was conspicuously silent. The silence was broken by George A. Folsom,
spokesperson for the NED funded International Republican Institute. Folsom
said that, in the coup, ''The Venezuelan people rose up to defend
democracy in their country.'' Neither NED, its network, nor the U.S.
government could plausibly deny supporting dictatorship instead of
democracy.
The lightning strike of the coup was followed by the thunder of over a
million people in the streets demanding Chavez's reinstatement. The
powerful mass of people enabled military officers, loyal to the
Constitution, to end the two day dictatorship and return Hugo Chavez to
the Presidential Palace, in his own words, "to the legitimate power
given to me by the people."
Despite backing by the White House and all privately owned media, the coup
plotters fell on their faces. In continuing efforts to bring down the
President by breaking the economy, they mounted a top management closure
of the oil industry marked by extensive physical sabotage of production.
Though the coup plotters, the media, and the bosses called it a
"strike," the workers rejected the lockout. It took two months
for the workers to return the industry to normal production. The oil-borne
economic sabotage cost the people of Venezuela some $24 billion, causing
cutbacks in Bolivarian Revolution programs in housing, education and
medical care.
With a projected potential of 300 million barrels of oil a day for 300
years and a tenacious defense of its sovereignty and independence,
Venezuela is a high stakes target for intervention by the Bush
administration. At present Bush administration hostility seems limited to
bolstering the oligarchy and meddling with trade union and political
organizations. Many people with whom we spoke in the streets voiced
serious concern that Venezuela could become another Iraq.
The taxpayer money NED gets from the government is fed into agencies
established by the Republican Party, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the
Democratic Party and the AFL- CIO. It is essentially a money laundering
operation funding so-called "private organizations," which do
the work once identified with the CIA. The objective is to gain entree
where our government's presence is unwelcome and to give Washington
"plausible deniability" if plans go awry or come into public
view. A 2002 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) report revealed that the
American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS,) the agency run
by the AFL-CIO had been directly involved with groups that led the charge
to oust Chavez. ACILS worked with and supported the Confederation of
Venezuelan Workers (CTV) and the nation's Chambers of Commerce (FEDECAMARAS)
to organize a series of meetings culminating in a major conference one
month before the April 11, 2002 coup. The two groups then became, in ACILS
words, "the flagship organizations leading the growing opposition to
the Chavez government." The International Affairs Department (IAD) of
the AFL-CIO told a different story.
In October 2003 Stan Gacek, speaking for the IAD, assured a group of
California trade unionists that in the year prior to the coup, ACILS did
no more than some training in support of internal democracy in the CTV. He
said, "... our total solidarity program with the CTV amounted to less
than $20,000..." The FOIA report disclosed that ACILS' work carried a
price tag of $154,377. Could it be that the development of the
"flagship organizations," which led opposition to Chavez, was an
incidental byproduct of the $20,000 expenditure? Over the previous five
years, ACILS spending in Venezuela was $703, 927. Do these discrepancies
indicate lies or covert activities? If Stan Gacek told the truth as he
knew it, was he, and therefore, John Sweeney, in the dark and out of the
information loop? Perhaps ACILS Director Harry Kamberis could best clarify
these questions. Here's how he appears in the 1977 State Department
Biographical Register: "Kamberis, Harry G. --B. 3/15/44. STATE Dept
R-7 1/72 -- Dacca cons off 6/72. R-6 4/74. Islamabad pol off 7/75."
According to Daniel Brandt of Namebase Online (http://www.pir.org ),
"This is a very typical entry for a CIA officer under State
Department cover."
ACILS is expected to work for trade union goals with the major labor
federation in any country. It is questionable if the CTV fits that bill.
CTV history of collaboration with the big business oligarchy has sorely
diminished its influence with workers, its numbers and its representative
authenticity. Today, according to UNT leaders, CTV is silent about the
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) while every major labor federation
in the western hemisphere speaks out against it. While unions worldwide
condemn the murder of trade unionists in neighboring Colombia, the CTV
says nothing. Allied with FEDECAMARAS and the most fascist like groups in
opposition to Chavez, CTV leaders would have to surmount glaring
contradictions to speak out out for national sovereignty and against U.S.
intervention.
The UNT came into existence after the April, 2002 coup. Venezuelan workers
and union leaders were appalled that the top leaders of the CTV plotted
with FEDECAMARAS to annul the nation's Constitution and deliver
dictatorial power into the hands of the bosses. In response, they streamed
out of the CTV, gathering with them some independent unions to form the
new federation.
Juan Alexis Rivero, Secretary Treasurer of the Federation of Electrical
Workers told us, "When it was clear that the CTV was irreconcilably
divided, there was a need to form the UNT in response to the use of the
CTV by its leaders in support of the the fascist coup." Orlando
Chirino, head of the Labor Federation of the state of Carabobo, says,
"after Chavez returned to Miraflores, 40% of CTV's affiliates broke
away to the the UNT," which continues to grow. Among CTV unions which
moved to the UNT are the Aluminum Workers Union, the Flour Workers
Federation, the Pharmaceutical Industry Workers Federation, the Ford Motor
Company Workers Union, the Public Workers Federation, the Energy Workers
Federation, the Oil Workers Federation, and others. UNT leaders calculate
that CTV now has fewer than 25% of the unions.
Over many years, the declining CTV earned the workers' scorn by failing to
stand up against employer abuses and by falling in line with the
repressive policies of Democratic Action (AD), one of the two parties of
the wealthy oligarchy whose members have held sway in CTV for decades.
According to the UNT, some CTV leaders have held office for 20 to 30 years
without benefit of elections. The UNT claims that the list of
irregularities in the 2001 CTV elections included; assaults on polling
places, witnesses excluded from some polling places, failure to make
timely and unmodified reports of returns and disappearance of 48% of the
records. The remaining records were never submitted to the election
authorities. CTV's internal collaboration with employers characterizes CTV
internationally as well.
During four decades CTV leaders sat on the Board of Trustees of the
American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the AFL-CIO's
original agency in Latin America. AIFLD became operational in 1962, first
headed by AFL-CIO President George Meany, later by Lane Kirkland. Its
first Director was Serafino Romualdi, succeeded by William C. Doherty, Jr.
CTV presidents Jose Vargas, Jose Gonzalez Navarro and others, through
decades, held AIFLD leadership positions alongside some of the top
corporate leaders of their time. Among those moguls were; J. Peter Grace,
then Chairman of both AIFLD and the W.R. Grace Corporation (He
"left" AIFLD when his ties to Nazis were exposed on national
TV.); Charles Brinkerhoff, Chair of Anaconda Copper; William Hickey,
United Corp.; Juan Trippe, Chair Pan American World Airways; Rodman
Rockefeller, Pres. Intnl. Basic Economy Corp.; Stanley Cleveland, Pres.
Bendix International; Thomas Lumpkin, Pres. Gulf Oil Latin America;
Charles Serraino - Vice Pres. Johnson & Johnson, many others - and -
topping the cake, the scion of the number one U.S. oil family, Nelson
Rockefeller.
The first funding for AIFLD came from the CIA, then the State Department
and several other government agencies. Under the mantra of anti-communism
and in the name of the AFL-CIO, AIFLD, backed corrupt, sellout unions,
attacked militant unions and helped deliver the governments of many
nations, including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador into the hands of
torturers and mass murderers. The CTV presidents on AIFLD's Board never
could have lasted in their prestigious positions had they opposed the
interventionist big business agenda. Lethal fallout from AIFLD's work made
Latin America extremely dangerous for class conscious trade unionists and
rolled out a golden carpet for multinational corporate globalization.
AIFLD and its counterpart operations on three continents were disbanded
and replaced after John Sweeney took the reins of the AFL-CIO in 1995.
They were replaced by the American Center for International Labor
Solidarity (ACILS). There have undoubtedly been important changes under
Sweeney, but something is radically wrong when three central labor
councils, in the "Unity and Trust" resolution, raise the
question that: "ACILS, directed by Harry Kamberis, whose background
is in government foreign service, is operating in the name of, but beyond
the knowledge and control of the AFL-CIO as part of the Bush
administration's drive for regime change in Venezuela, a replay of the
Nixon administration's bloody collusion in crimes in Chile over 30 years
ago."
The AFL-CIO has never accounted for its role in Chile or in any country
disastrously touched by its past actions, linked to the CIA and State
Department. Refusal to honestly confront that history will not make it go
away. Federation officials have resisted "washing our dirty laundry
in public." For the public, that leaves the dirty laundry, dirty. Had
they confronted AFL-CIO history with the CTV, they would have known its
propensity to side with the bosses, the oligarchs and the U.S. based
empire of oil. Federation leaders cannot adhere to the basic principles of
the AFL-CIO and knowingly aid and abet exploiters and the forces which
support dictatorship over democracy.
Before submitting "Unity and Trust" to the California Labor
Federation, the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council asked The International
Affairs Department of the AFL-CIO (IAD) to respond. The IAD was invited to
either reply to the resolution in writing or send a speaker to a labor
council meeting on June 21, 2003. When there was no response, "Unity
and Trust" was forwarded to the State Federation. There, the
Resolutions Committee made some changes, leaving it substantially intact.
When it hit the convention floor on July 13, 2004, "Unity and
Trust" was unanimously approved by the more than 400 delegates
representing 2.4 million workers in California. Trade unionists in the UNT
greeted the resolution as a genuine act of worker-to-worker solidarity.
I went to Venezuela as much to teach as to learn. I did both in equal
measure. Word about our new level of U.S. trade union opposition to the
interventionist practices of the AFL-CIO and the Bush administration found
it's mark in Venezuela. It took a sharp turn away from the millions of
government dollars invested by the AFL-CIO in the CTV during more than
forty years of Cold War anti-communism. There are limits to the amount of
compliance and stability that money can effectively buy in a repressed but
restive working class, especially when it sits upon the richest oil
resource in the western world. It seems that, given an opening to
democracy, sovereignty and independence, workers make a stand and take
their place in the development of their nation.
*************
THE FOLLOWING RESOLUTION WAS PASSED DECISIVELY, IF NOT UNANIMOUSLY AT THE
CALIFORNIA LABOR FEDERATION CONVENTION ON JULY 13, 2004 IN SAN DIEGO
CALIFORNIA.
BUILD UNITY AND TRUST AMONG WORKERS WORLDWIDE
Resolution No. 6 - Originally presented by the San Francisco Labor
Council,
San Francisco; the South Bay Central Labor Council, San Jose; the Monterey
Bay Central Labor Council, Castroville; and Plumbers and Fitters Local 393
(San Jose).
WHEREAS, the AFL-CIO and unions generally in the U.S. are deeply committed
to the concept of solidarity with labor movements in other countries; and
WHEREAS, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has a dubious history,
having been deployed frequently to promote U.S. government foreign policy
objectives, including assisting in overthrowing democratically elected
governments and interfering in the internal affairs of the labor movements
of other countries; and
WHEREAS, the conventions of the International Labor Organization guarantee
workers of every country the right to choose to be represented by the
labor
organization or union of their own choosing, free from government,
corporate
or foreign interference or constraints; and
WHEREAS, the AFL-CIO leadership, through the Federation's Solidarity
Center, has announced its intentions to apply for $3 to $5 million in
funding from the NED for its operations in Iraq; and
WHEREAS, AFL-CIO acceptance of NED funding for its solidarity work in Iraq
may give the appearance , if not the effect, of making the AFL-CIO appear
to
be an agent of the U.S. government and its foreign policies, which may
taint
the good reputation of the Federation in the eyes of labor movements in
other countries and draw into question the motivation and true
independence
of the Federation in its international affairs; and
WHEREAS, the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council and its affiliate, Plumbers
and fitters Local 393 presented the "Clear the Air Resolution"
at the July
24, 2002 California Labor Federation Convention, and though many delegates
had current concern about Venezuela, "Clear the Air" outlined an
AFL-CIO
role leading to the 1973 coup in Chile and, among other things, called
upon
the AFL-CIO, "to fully account for what was done in Chile and other
countries where similar roles may have been played in our name, to
renounce
such policies and practices..., describe, country by country, exactly what
activities it may still be engaged in abroad with funds paid by government
agencies and renounce any such ties that could compromise our authentic
credibility and the trust of workers here and abroad and that would make
us
paid agents of government or of the forces of corporate economic
globalization"; and
WHEREAS, leaders of the State Federation presented a substitute
resolution,
"Looking Ahead on AFL-CIO Policy Abroad," calling "upon the
AFL-CIO to
convene a meeting with the State Federation and interested affiliates in
California to discuss their present foreign affairs activities involving
government funds. The aim of the meeting will be to clear the air
concerning AFL-CIO policy abroad and to affirm a policy of genuine global
solidarity"; and
WHEREAS, leaders of the State Federation, the SBLC, Local 393 and UFCW
Local
428 negotiated an agreement to accept the compromise "Looking
Ahead"
resolution, based explicitly on the understanding that the meeting with
the
AFL-CIO had the burden of satisfying the outlined concerns and if it
failed
to do so, then the original "Clear the Air" resolution would
require
implementation. In calls for unity, that understanding was clearly stated
on
the floor of the convention without discord or disagreement; and
WHEREAS, significant disagreement exists about whether the meeting that
took
place on October 14, 2003 fully addressed the concerns raised within the
original"Clear the Air" resolution; and
WHEREAS, questions have been raised about how the information provided in
this meeting relates to information contained in newly released government
documents about the AFL-CIO's involvement in Venezuela and its acceptance
on
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funds; now therefore be it
RESOLVED, that this 25th Biennial Convention of the California Labor
Federation, AFL-CIO affirm its support for the principles of autonomy,
independence and self-determination embodied in the International
Conventions of the International Labor Organization; and be it further
RESOLVED, that this 25th Biennial Convention of the California Labor
Federation, AFL-CIO urge the national AFL-CIO and its Solidarity Center to
exercise extreme caution in seeking or accepting funding from the U.S.
government, its agencies and any other institutions which it funds such as
the NED for its work in Iraq or elsewhere, and to accept these funds only
to
further the goals of honest international labor solidarity, not to pursue
the policies of Corporate America and the United States government; and be
it further
RESOLVED that the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO supports the basic
demand of the "Clear the Air" resolution to call upon the
National AFL-CIO
"to fully account for what was done in Chile (and Venezuela) and
other
countries where similar roles may have been played in our name, and to
describe, country by country, exactly what activities it may still be
engaged in abroad with funds paid by government agencies and renounce any
such ties that could compromise our authentic credibility and the trust of
workers here and abroad and that would make us paid agents of government
or
of the forces of corporate economic globalization"; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO urge the National
AFL-CIO to fund its international programs and activities, whenever
possible, from funds generated directly from its affiliates and their
members; and be it finally
RESOLVED, that the California Labor Federation send this resolution to the
National AFL-CIO for immediate attention in order to move forward together
in creating trust and unity among workers worldwide.