Italian Metalworkers' Union supports Venezuelan UNT and reject pro-coup CTV

In Defense of Marxism, 3 June 2004

As a result of the initiative of the Hands Off Venezuela Campaign, the regional Congress of the FIOM-CGIL in Lombardy unanimously passed a resolution in solidarity with the Venezuelan workers and with the newly formed UNT trade union, and rejected the “corrupt bureaucracy of the CTV” for having supported the coup against Chavez in April 2002. The FIOM-CGIL is the union which organises Italian metalworkers, and Lombardy is the region around Milan, where there is the highest concentration of workers in this industrial sector. The Congress had more than 300 delegates, representing more than 90,000 workers, and the resolution was passed unanimously. The resolution is almost the same that was passed two weeks earlier at the FIOM provincial congress in Casserta (see the article: Italian metalworkers' union supports Venezuelan UNT). This practically guarantees that the subject will be discussed at the forthcoming national congress of the FIOM-CGIL in two weeks time. The metal workers represent the largest section of organised workers in Italy.

Resolution passed at the FIOM-CGIL Lombardy Congress:

The FIOM-CGIL Lombardy Congress follows with concern the dramatic situation that workers in Venezuela are living through. The difficult situations the country has lived through in the last few years include the attempted coup on April 11, 2002, and the bosses lock out of December 2002, both led by the president of the local employers' federation Fedecamaras, Carmona, and substancially supported by the corrupt bureaucracy of the CTV.

Therefore the Venezuelan workers decided in August 2003 to found a new trade union confederation, the UNT, which subsequently has been joined by a growing number of trade union organisations from different sectors and which now represents the majority of Venezuelan workers.

In the last few months, representatives of the UNT are making a difficult and patient work of counter-information internationally, in order to break with the silence and lies of the main mass media, and above all to build a network of international links with all those trade union bodies which fight for the rights of labour.

The Regional Congress of the FIOM-CGIL Lombardy expresses its full solidarity with the Venezuelan workers and the UNT, appealing to the union at a national level to build permanent trade union relations with it and to start a useful exchange of experiences which will be a fruitful for both organisations and will provide us with more elements of analysis and understanding of reality.