An interview with ORLANDO CHIRINO
ORLANDO CHIRINO is a member of the national coordinating committee of the National Union of Workers (UNT) of Venezuela, the leading union federation in the country formed as an alternative to the corrupt Workers’ Confederation of Venezuela (CTV). Currently a member of the oil workers union, Chirino has been a long-time leading trade unionist in Venezuela. He is also a member of the organizing committee of the Party of Revolution and Socialism (PRS), formed in 2005.
International Socialist Review contributors SARAH HINES and STUART EASTERLING, attending the World Social Forum in Caracas, interviewed Chirino on January 28, 2006.
In the interview, Chirino describes the origin and makeup of the UNT, its relationship to the Hugo Chávez government, its position on sharing management responsibility between workers and management (cogestión) and workers’ self-management (autogestión) that has taken root in several Venezuelan workplaces since the 2003 defeat of the bosses’ strike against the oil industry. At the time, oil workers took over key production and transportation facilities and assured the industry would not shut down. After that experience, a debate inside the Venezuelan workers’ movement about the possibilities of cogestión and autogestión has flourished.
As a leading socialist in Venezuela, Chirino also speaks about the prospects for building a revolutionary party to fight for socialism in Venezuela. As Chirino puts it in this interview, he and other leaders of the PRS—which groups together several currents from Trotskyism to militant trade unionism—consider the party to be a vehicle for bringing together militants who can launch a revolutionary party in the future.
WHAT ARE the most important differences between the national Union of Workers (UNT) and the Workers’ Confederation of Venezuela (CTV), and how do Venezuelan workers perceive them?
THE FIRST important difference between the UNT and the CTV is fundamentally political. The UNT was the result of a revolutionary victory, the defeat of the employers’ sabotage strike that occurred between December 2002 and February 2003. Also, the CTV was the fruit of, was founded by, the political parties of the previous regime.
Secondly, the other big difference is that the UNT is openly identified with the revolutionary process underway in Venezuela. It emerged in order to deepen the revolution. And CTV was and is an instrument of the counterrevolution.
Thirdly, the UNT is a union federation that is profoundly democratic. While within it there are leaders of other currents who come from the Right and who are anti-democratic, fundamentally its program, its character is democratic. The CTV was never democratic. It never consulted the workers, including in 1997 when it committed its first great betrayal [with the “reform” of the national labor law]. These are what I believe are the differences between the two union federations.
How do the workers perceive them? Well, in the first place, there is a developing process of union resignations from the CTV to the UNT, which the affiliation commission is currently reviewing leading up to the [UNT] congress. We are now composed of 754 unions that have transferred their affiliations to us—this is approximately 1.2 million members.
WHICH UNIONS switched from the CTV to the UNT?
THE MAJORITY of them, ourselves among them, come from the CTV. In each region now the UNT has a regional headquarters. The CTV has its headquarters, but almost no workers. The best example of this is that 90 percent of the collective bargaining agreements under discussion in the country, whether in the public or private sector, are currently being negotiated by the UNT, something that was different before.
On May Day, we made clear that the UNT is the majority federation and the most representative. A march was called for that day, and the CTV did not assemble even a thousand people. We assembled approximately 400,000 workers who came out to march. It was a very important demonstration of this.
WHAT WOULD you say to those who argue that the UNT is an instrument of the government, as some in the AFL-CIO do?
IN THIS I am absolutely unequivocal. The UNT is a pluralistic federation where different currents converge. We represent a current within it that fights for the unconditional and complete autonomy of the labor movement. Even the statements of the president of the republic have reaffirmed this position of autonomy.
To say that in concrete terms there is a link to the government is obvious. Through all the years of confrontation, before the opposition was defeated, we formed a united front with the government to defend a legitimately constituted government; in this way we were defending democracy. These are the factors from the past.
With the opposition defeated, a very important confrontation has begun within the UNT, which needs to be resolved, or be partly resolved, at the UNT congress February 16–17 [Editors’ note: This congress was postponed to April 26–28, 2006]. Currently, a majority of the UNT leadership holds a position in favor of autonomy from the government, and the majority of the membership is calling for the federation to be independent. Do not forget that the president is the number one employer of the country. While we are in agreement with him on many issues, independence is very important.
WHAT ROLE is Chávez playing in the development of workplace cogestión and autogestión in Venezuela?
THIS IS a very important point as far as expressing the degree of autonomy of the UNT. The president is currently developing an extremely important type of cogestión in the recovered factories, involving a combination whereby the government contributes resources, the bosses their assets, the workers of course their labor, and in the administration of the firm, there is participation. It is a process where the only thing we have criticized—since we’re for self-management—is that we were never in favor of giving company shares to the workers. We asked that the factories be nationalized, and that workers be able to participate in management, and that the utilities be placed at the service of the public’s needs. That was our position.
Where the biggest disagreement exists is in the area of state industries, fundamentally, the oil industry, and in electricity generation. The president has decreed that he is completely opposed to cogestión in these firms, under the argument that these are strategic firms, and have to do with state security. We believe the president is mistaken, and the debate then began with them. This position strengthens bureaucratization, the bureaucrats of the revolutionary process [i.e., government officials], favor corruption, and in a way, although it is unconscious, is a denigration of the strength and power that we workers have in the struggle to build a new society.
IS THERE a difference, as you see it, between the way the president is perceived by unionized workers, as opposed to the poor in general in the country?
NO. NINETY percent of the workers in the country are Chavistas. They are with Chávez. I don’t have the slightest doubt on this. This percentage, however, when you look at Chávez’s associates—the government ministers—is very low. They have only 20 or 30 percent support. This difference is very significant. This includes the local mayors, since there are often regular battles with them.
The president says it every Sunday [on his live TV program Aló Presidente]: The greatest dangers to this revolution are bureaucratization and corruption. I would add: conservatization. There is an important sector of ministers, especially in finance, that uses the cooperatives to make work less secure. We believe that the revolution needs to lower unemployment, which is at 12, 13 percent, and in addition, to provide dignified work—stable work, with all the social rights, and security.
HOW CAN the cooperatives act to make work less secure?
IT’S VERY simple! They eliminate your previous relationship with the firm, convert you into a cooperative, and a new, specific relationship of dependence with the government forms. Some say, “I have my cooperative.” It’s an interesting debate, but that is starting to capture the imagination of the country. We see cooperatives as a supplement, but not the fundamental place for workers [to fight back].
For us, the workers should run the expropriated firms. They should run them! Also, a strange development took place in firms like INDEPAL [a paper factory taken over by the government and now operated under cogestión] that we were and are opposed to. Immediately after the cooperative was formed there, the union was eliminated. For us, the unions are the workers’ fundamental tool for struggle in this society, or another. In practical, concrete terms we believe that we need to pass through a stage of education of the workers, of political clarity, in order to address this problem. Because if not, we run the risk that the workers will begin to act like bosses! To fight for their shares of stock, and so on. The only advocates of this position are those who represent the class-conscious and revolutionary current within the UNT, which is the majority today.
People get very worried that we are going against Chávez. No—we are unequivocal on this. We already contributed to the defeat of the [right-wing] opposition. All the imperialist plans that are launched have to be fought. But we believe we have the right to move towards socialism, and for us socialism is a change in the relations of production, socializing the means of production, and producing for the needs of the population.
WHAT ARE the challenges and opportunities for you, the comrades in the PRS, being union activists and union leaders, while trying to build a revolutionary party at the same time?
IN VENEZUELA, we just had an election to the National Assembly. The opposition withdrew, and there was a 75 percent abstention rate. A component of this abstention, obviously, say 40 percent, is anti-Chávez. We also trace it to the poorest sectors of the country who—despite the president’s call—did not turn out to vote, seeing that the opposition was no longer involved, but also as an expression of protest against bureaucratization, and the minimal democracy in naming political candidates. It was an open rejection of the political parties.
This is a concrete development that has shown us something. We believe that it is very important to raise the banner of a revolutionary party in Venezuela, one that fights for socialism. How do the workers perceive this? Among the workers there is a lot of confusion right now. Due to the tremendous weight the president has, it’s difficult for a worker to understand that a party is being built against the president’s party, the MBR (Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement). From one point of view, the MBR is seen as resolving the question of the class struggle.
We have our own characterization: in none of these political parties is there any possibility of reversing reformism and bureaucratization. These parties do not allow debate, none of them are democratic. For seven years, they haven’t debated anything. Nor have they had internal elections, including in the largest of these, the Fifth Republic Movement [the main Chavista party].
The instrument that we are beginning to build has to mature in a debate from below, with the workers, the people, the peasants; with the women, who have been advancing their rights within Venezuela. I have been firmly opposed to all kinds of autoproclamación [i.e., organizations declaring themselves the leadership of the working class]. This debate will continue to the point when we formally launch the party with a founding congress, and we will have achieved a certain level of conscious participation. Not how we often do it—the Trotskyist current—as autoproclamación. We, I, are Trotskyists also. But as for the working class leaders that are in the PRS, our posture has always been that we have to have some caution. Because, in addition, it isn’t a Trotskyist party that we seek to form in this country. We want a revolutionary party, which is profoundly internally democratic. We obviously want to discuss what we revolutionaries refer to as “democratic centralism,” [a concept which has been really] screwed up [by], the democratic centralism of the Stalinists. Understanding why we affirm Leninist structures in the building of the party—everything needs to be discussed in depth.
To come back to your question, I don’t have the slightest doubt that there has never before been in Venezuela the possibility to build a revolutionary party as there is now. Never.
