[News] What is the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center Doing in Venezuela: We Have a Right to Know!

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://afgj.org/what-is-the-afl-cios-solidarity-center-doing-in-venezuela-we-have-a-right-to-know 



  What is the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center Doing in Venezuela: We Have a
  Right to Know!

February 7, 2019

by James Patrick Jordan

The Solidarity Center–the AFL-CIO’s organization for acting around the 
world–has long been active in Venezuela, and not usually for good 
effect.  We demand that the Solidarity Center open their books, and 
honestly report about their current operations in that country.

We hope they are not supporting the current coup attempt against 
President Nicolaus Maduro in any way, as the coup attempt is an illegal 
effort to replace a democratically-elected president with one not 
elected by the Venezuelan people but of the US Government.  But we don’t 
know; their past operations cause us great concerns; and we want them to 
prove to us they have nothing to do with the current attempt.


      Send an email to the Solidarity Center asking them to open the
      books on their activities in Venezuela
      <https://afgj.salsalabs.org/whatisthesolidaritycenterdoinginvenezuela/index.html>

The AFL-CIO associated Solidarity Center has received at least 
$3,925,000 for operations in Venezuela and Colombia between 2010 and 
2019, and perhaps more. The Solidarity Center gets approximately 90 
percent of its funding from the United States government, mostly via the 
National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The Solidarity Center has a 
history that includes advancing State Department goals even against the 
interests of workers. It channeled money to plotters in Venezuela behind 
the attempted coup of 2002. The Solidarity Center supported union 
officials who locked out their own oil workers during the economic 
sabotage that followed the failed coup attempt. In 2008, when the 
AFL-CIO was leading the resistance to a Free Trade Agreement between the 
U.S. and Colombia, the Solidarity Center was meeting with the U.S. 
Embassy in Colombia to discuss strategies for passing that same FTA. The 
Solidarity Center leadership that was in Venezuela and Colombia in 2002 
and 2008 is still in place in 2019.

The Solidarity Center’s operations are part of the AFL-CIO (and 
previously, AFL) foreign operations that have taken place over the past 
100+ years.  This was most completely documented in a 2010 book titled 
/AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or 
Sabotage?/ by long-time labor activist and Purdue University 
sociologist, Kim Scipes (Lanham, MD:  Lexington Books).  The Solidarity 
Center has continued operating since then.

The Solidarity Center has probably received more funding than we know 
about. But since they do not open their books to AFL-CIO members, 
information is not available about specific projects and details about 
who they are funding. Nonetheless, some information is worth 
remembering.  In 2012, I wrote an article revealing that the Solidarity 
Center had gotten a two-year $3 million grant for its Venezuela/Colombia 
office 
<https://afgj.org/usaid-grants-3-million-to-solidarity-centers-bogota-office-unionists-want-to-know-why>. 
While researching that piece, I also discovered information about a 
$400,000 grant in 2010 for the same purposes. I recently visited the NED 
and Solidarity Center websites to find out about funding and operations 
since that time. The only information now available is for the year 
2017, which gives a vague description of a $525,000 grant,

“To build and broaden support for the defense of fundamental labor 
rights in Venezuela beyond the trade union movement, and prepare new 
union leaders to advocate for workers’ interests through democratic 
processes. In Colombia, the center will bolster union participation in 
transitional bodies established to implement aspects of the peace 
accord, as well as support union-led advocacy for improved access to 
justice.”

If you go to the NED website and look at its page for Latin America 
grants <https://www.ned.org/region/latin-america-and-caribbean/>, you 
will only find the most general  descriptions of its 2017 funding. It 
does provide a link you can click to “View Grants from Previous Years”. 
Unfortunately, that link only takes you back to the opening page about 
the regions they work in, not to information for any other years. It’s a 
loop of non-functionality.

If one goes to the Solidarity Center website for more information about 
operations in Venezuela 
<https://www.solidaritycenter.org/where-we-work/americas/venezuela/>, 
one will find the same vague overview that has been there since it was 
first posted in 2014:

“In Venezuela, Solidarity Center works with a broad range of national 
labor centers and unaffiliated worker organizations….

The Solidarity Center supports efforts to unite unions from diverse 
political orientations to promote fundamental labor rights in the face 
of anti-labor actions that threaten both pro-government unions and 
traditionally independent unions. This emphasis on core union rights 
such as freedom of association and collective bargaining helps unions 
transcend their political fissures to address the basic needs of working 
people in Venezuela.”

Should we take the Solidarity Center at its word? In 2002, the 
Solidarity Center clearly favored the anti-Bolivarian CTV (Confederation 
of Venezuelan Workers), who were collaborating with company bosses and 
Venezuela’s right wing against the democratically-elected government.  
At that time, Rhett Doumitt was the Solidarity Center’s agent overseeing 
Colombia and Venezuela operations, with his office in Caracas. He was 
responsible for funneling cash to coup plotters from the CTV. That 
office relocated to Bogotá about a month before the attempted coup. 
Usually Solidarity Center field officials are rotated after five years 
in one location, but seventeen years later, Doumitt is still 
coordinating operations in Colombia and Venezuela, and the Solidarity 
Center continues to maintain its long relationship with the CTV. So, all 
the old players are still in place as Venezuela once again plunges into 
crisis and confronts the latest U.S. regime change efforts.

But perhaps today things are different. If so – why doesn’t the 
Solidarity Center open its books so we can see for ourselves? The 
Solidarity Center has been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, 
perhaps millions, in Venezuela, and no one but they have any real idea 
what they’re doing.

On February 4 2018, an intern working with the Alliance for Global 
Justice called the Solidarity Center for a research project. He wanted 
information on specific kinds of work the Solidarity Center is doing in 
Venezuela, and who some of their main partners are. The operator told 
him, “We have a workers union, and we will work with partners when 
needed.” She added, “Our website is constantly updated, so just look 
there to see what is going on.” When he asked for the office number of 
the Solidarity Center in Bogotá, he was told, “Sorry, we don’t just give 
out phone numbers like that.”

Again, I have periodically looked at the Solidarity Center website since 
I wrote the 2012 article mentioned earlier. There have been no constant 
updates. The information regarding Venezuela is old, stagnant, and 
minimal. And why is the Solidarity Center’s office number in Bogotá such 
a secret? Do they have something to hide? Shouldn’t a Solidarity Center 
office be publicly reachable?

We are seeing developments in Venezuela that give us every reason for 
concern. Workers, proponents of democracy, those who oppose foreign 
interference in other countries’ elections, the tax payers whose monies 
fund the Solidarity Center – we have a right to know what they are doing 
in Venezuela. We especially have that right, knowing what we know from 
2002, and seeing suspicious similarities as the U.S. government is 
calling for a coup and trying to install its own hand-picked “president” 
today.

Over the past year, there have been a series of strikes in Venezuela. 
Some of these strikes have been legitimate activities of unionists 
trying to win improved compensation and other demands. There are no 
workers’ paradises in this world, and while Venezuela is moving toward 
socialism based on popular power, it is not there, yet. Capitalism and 
corporate power have hardly been erased in Venezuela. So, certainly 
there is a continuing need for unions, and they will continue to wage 
struggles. No one disputes that.

But many of these strikes have been called by unions and union leaders 
who have a collaborationist history with right wing parties. In fact, 
some of them are leaders in these parties. We are in a time of economic 
sanctions, hording by opposition business leaders, with new measures 
enacted to block oil profits returning to Venezuela. Labor unrest can be 
an important component for this destabilization.

José Elias Torres, the General Secretary of the CTV, has taken every 
opportunity to denounce the current government and has appeared publicly 
<http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/politica/elias-torres-maduro-principal-responsable-ruina-nacional_266054> 
alongside the self-proclaimed “President of Venezuela,” Juan Guaidó (as 
opposed to the President, Nicolás Maduro, who was democratically-elected 
in a national election last year). Torres and the CTV helped mobilize 
participation <https://twitter.com/Inaesin1/status/1087934153503490051> 
in the January 23, 2019 demonstrations where Guaidó made the 
proclamation that /he/ was the president, not Maduro, following a phone 
call the night before from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence giving him the 
green light.

Ivan Freites is a leader of both the Federation of Oil Workers (part of 
the CTV), and also the political party Voluntad Popular (Popular Will), 
founded by opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. Lopez is known for calling 
for violence against the Bolivarian government and its supporters. Five 
days after Guaidó’s proclamation, Freites was calling for a takeover of 
PDVSA 
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-sanctions-pdvsa/total-shock-pdvsa-workers-take-stock-of-u-s-sanctions-impact-idUSKCN1PN06N>, 
the state oil company. It is as if he has taken a play straight from the 
2002 collaboration between the union leaders and FEDECAMARAS (Federation 
of Chambers of Commerce and Production), the leading business 
organization in the country.

All the pieces are still in place today that we saw in 2002. The same 
leadership is at the Solidarity Center Venezuela/Colombia office. The 
CTV and the Federation of Oil Workers, old friends to the Solidarity 
Center, are pursuing the same anti-worker and anti-democratic tactics 
they did back in 2002. And the Solidarity Center is as suspiciously mum 
on its activities in Venezuela as ever.

But it would be a mistake to cynically take the little bit of 
information we have, connect that to the past, and shrug our collective 
shoulders and say with bitter resignation that, “The Solidarity Center 
is up to its old tricks again.” This is not the same Solidarity Center 
that we had in 2002. In 2002, the Director of the Solidarity Center was 
Harry Kelber, a holdover from pre-Solidarity Center days when AFL-CIO 
foreign relations were arguably a front for the CIA. Since Kelber left, 
new leadership has come of age throughout the AFL-CIO, including the 
Solidarity Center.  Some indication of new thinking was evident during 
the 2009 coup against the elected government of Manuel Zelaya in 
Honduras. During that unfortunate time, every statement or report I saw 
from or about the Solidarity Center indicated that it was against the coup.

Another change I have seen in the AFL-CIO, as distinct from the 
Solidarity Center, has to do with Colombia. Back in 2008 and 2009, when 
the Solidarity Center was meeting to strategize for passage of a 
US-Colombia FTA, it was also intervening to stop solidarity 
relationships with the FENSUAGRO federation of agricultural workers 
unions, who were dismissed as being too “communist”. FENSUAGRO is one of 
the most persecuted labor organizations in the world, having suffered 
constant threats, assaults, and displacement because of targeting by 
paramilitary death squads and Colombian Armed Forces serving the 
interests of extractive industries and big landowners. Today, the United 
Steelworkers, California Federation of Labor, New York State Auto 
Workers Unions, and several other labor federations at various levels 
have made statements and taken actions of solidarity with FENSUAGRO. 
FENSUAGRO General Secretary Nidia Quintero has twice toured the U.S., 
speaking at labor halls across the country.

When one looks at the current Board of Trustees for the Solidarity 
Center compared to that of past times, one has reason to believe that 
there has been some positive movement. The new board includes Leo 
Gerrard, of the United Steelworkers, a union that has pioneered 
international worker to worker solidarity, independent of U.S. 
government funding or direction. The USW opened the path of acceptance 
in the U.S. for FENSUAGRO.

Art Pulaski is another Board Member. Pulaski has been the Executive 
Secretary Treasurer of the California Federation of Labor since 1996. 
Under Pulaski’s leadership, the Cal Fed unanimously passed the historic 
“Unity and Trust Among Workers Worldwide” resolution, which was brought 
before the 2005 AFL-CIO convention. That resolution had two demands: 
that the Solidarity Center open its books on activities past, present, 
and future; and that it wean itself off its dependency on U.S. 
government funding.

Those of us involved in the struggle to change how U.S. Labor conducts 
its international relations have seen some progress over the years, and 
that progress has even touched the Solidarity Center. That’s why this is 
not a time for cynicism, but for mobilization.

But some things have pointedly not changed. The old system at the 
Solidarity Center is still in place. That system is not accountable to, 
nor does it proceed from labor. The Solidarity Center is still a U.S. 
government funded and, therefore, dependent institution. And that means 
it can still function as a conduit for U.S. interference in the 
electoral affairs of other countries, including regime change.

Whatever improvements may or may not be happening at the Solidarity 
Center, they are happening within a context of interference in Latin 
America that dates at least back to 1973 and the overthrow of Salvador 
Allende by Augusto Pinochet, in which the AFL-CIO played a shameful 
part. Given that, the Solidarity Center is in no defensible position to 
obscure what it’s doing in Venezuela today.

We have a right to know what if any role the Solidarity Center has 
played in the current march toward regime change in Venezuela. We have a 
right to know what kind of relationship the Solidarity Center has today 
with the CTV and other labor bodies, and in what ways it may be aiding 
economic sabotage. If the Solidarity Center is innocent of any 
wrongdoing, then it should open its books and show us. If it is not, 
then it needs to open its books all the more.

We have a right to know.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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