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<h1 class="reader-title">What is the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center
Doing in Venezuela: We Have a Right to Know!</h1>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time">February 7, 2019<br>
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<p>by James Patrick Jordan</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3><a
href="https://afgj.salsalabs.org/whatisthesolidaritycenterdoinginvenezuela/index.html">Send
an email to the Solidarity Center asking them to open
the books on their activities in Venezuela</a></h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <em>AFL-CIO’s
Secret War against Developing Country Workers:
Solidarity or Sabotage?</em> by long-time labor
activist and Purdue University sociologist, Kim Scipes
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books). The Solidarity Center
has continued operating since then.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://afgj.org/usaid-grants-3-million-to-solidarity-centers-bogota-office-unionists-want-to-know-why">$3
million grant for its Venezuela/Colombia office</a>.
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,</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>If you go to the NED website and look at its page for <a
href="https://www.ned.org/region/latin-america-and-caribbean/">Latin
America grants</a>, 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.</p>
<p>If one goes to the Solidarity Center website for more
information about <a
href="https://www.solidaritycenter.org/where-we-work/americas/venezuela/">operations
in Venezuela</a>, one will find the same vague
overview that has been there since it was first posted
in 2014:</p>
<p>“In Venezuela, Solidarity Center works with a broad
range of national labor centers and unaffiliated worker
organizations….</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>José Elias Torres, the General Secretary of the CTV,
has taken every opportunity to denounce the current
government and has <a
href="http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/politica/elias-torres-maduro-principal-responsable-ruina-nacional_266054">appeared
publicly</a> 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 <a
href="https://twitter.com/Inaesin1/status/1087934153503490051">CTV
helped mobilize participation</a> in the January 23,
2019 demonstrations where Guaidó made the proclamation
that <em>he</em> was the president, not Maduro,
following a phone call the night before from U.S. Vice
President Mike Pence giving him the green light.</p>
<p>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, <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-sanctions-pdvsa/total-shock-pdvsa-workers-take-stock-of-u-s-sanctions-impact-idUSKCN1PN06N">Freites
was calling for a takeover of PDVSA</a>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>We have a right to know.</p>
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