U.S., Cuban, Venezuelan workers to meet

Is it cast in stone that workers must pay the cost for bankrupt airlines and auto parts companies and that they must lose jobs and benefits? Workers from the U.S. will have a chance to ask Cuban and Vene zue lan union leaders that question and much more at the Cuba/Venezuela/North America Labor Conference, Dec. 9-11 in Tijuana, Mexico.

The conference will explore how these two Latin American countries are making gains through workers’ solidarity and international cooperation, from the Boli varian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) to immigration issues created by the intervention of transnational corporations throughout the Americas.

Participants from Venezuela will include José Gil, general secretary of the Aluminum Workers Union (ALCASA); a national coordinator of the central labor federation known as the National Union of Workers (UNT); and José Ramón Rivero, director of Venezuela Aluminum.

Participants from Cuba will include Leonel Gonzalez Gonzalez, director of foreign relations of the Cuban Workers Federation (CTC); Manuel Montero Bistil liero, director of the Americas Department of Foreign Relations of the CTC; Ermela García Santiago, director of the National School of Cadre of the CTC; Lázaro Peña; and Edison Earl Brown, official interpreter for the CTC.

Phil Lenton, international coordinator for Britain’s Salud International, will also be there.

A special and exciting opportunity to continue this conference discussion will take place in January at the Sixth World Social Forum, to be held in Caracas, Vene zuela. The Venezuelan Trade Union Federation (UNT) will host a U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange delegation and organize visits to work sites in the capital city.

The group will then travel to Colombia as guests of the SINALTRAINAL union there. Meetings are scheduled with workers in the flower industry and workers from Coca-Cola and Nestle transnational corporations. Special meetings with the African-Colombian organizations Negri tude and the indigenous organization Kankuama OIK-Cocacoop are planned along with work-site visits.

For more than 40 years the U.S. government, under both Democratic and Repub lican administrations, has tried to destroy the Cuban Revolution through economic blockade, assassination attempts, and biological and terrorist attacks. Even though the U.S. government bars its citizens from traveling to Cuba under threat of legal haras sment and fines, it can’t hide Cuba’s huge accomplishments in health care and education, the result of ending capitalist exploitation.

Right now, Venezuela, too, and particularly President Hugo Chávez, is in the cross-hairs of U.S. imperialism. His government’s special “missions” provide food, education and medical care for the majority of the Venezuelan people, who never before shared in the oil wealth of this fifth-largest producer in the world.

At the same time, “non-productive” land and factories are being turned over to the landless and the workers. Unlike Cuba, Venezuela is still a capitalist country, but a radical social transformation is in process.

[In April 2004 WW reporter Betsey Piette attended a UNT-hosted conference. Her report, “Venezuelan models of co-management,” can be found at www.workers.org/2005/world/venezuela-0519/.]

Registration for the Cuba/Venezuela/ North America conference and for the World Social Forum Caracas and Bogotá delegation is open now. For more information e-mail [email protected] or call (313) 561-8330.