An exile accused of treason will compete against an ally of President Hugo Chavez for the right to lead Venezuela's labor movement at the UN' annual labor conference starting on Tuesday.
Carlos Ortega, head of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation, fled to Costa Rica after leading a two-month general strike that failed to oust Chavez earlier this year.
Ortega squares off against Orlando Chirinos, leader of the government-supported National Workers Union, at the International Labor Organization assembly in Geneva. The gathering runs through June 19.
It's the first time since Venezuela became a democracy in 1958 that the 65-year-old workers confederation, or CTV, won't lead Venezuela's official labor delegation.
Citing the strike and alleged fraud in CTV elections in 2001, Chavez's government tapped the newly formed Workers Union, or UNT, to represent Venezuelan unions.
Ortega hopes the ILO will withhold recognition of Chirinos' group, which it sees as another move by Chavez to assert his leftist government's control over Venezuelan society.
"The government is risking having the UNT expelled from the ILO meeting," said CTV leader Froilan Barrios.
ILO officials were not immediately available for comment Friday.
At stake is the welfare of millions of workers and retirees who are owed millions of dollars in back pay and pensions. Venezuela's minimum wage is 247,600 bolivars (US$155). It costs about 400,000 bolivars (US$250) each month to feed a family of four.
From exile, the burly Ortega remains a hero to many who accuse Chavez of imposing an authoritarian regime and bankrupting the economy.
As former head of Venezuela's largest oil workers union, Ortega handed Chavez his first defeat by leading a successful oil strike for higher pay in 2000.
Later that year, Chavez won a referendum to force the CTV to hold internal elections -- elections bitterly opposed by the ILO as government interference in private union affairs. Ortega handily beat Chavez's candidate; Chavez accused Ortega of electoral fraud.
Last year, Ortega led a general strike that snowballed into a two-day coup in April. He tried again in December and repeatedly predicted Chavez would resign.
Venezuelans paid dearly for the strike. Organized with Venezuela's largest business association, it momentarily paralyzed the world's No. 5 oil exporter. It cost Venezuela US$7.5 billion and contributed to a 29 percent economic contraction in the first quarter this year. Chavez fired more than 18,000 strikers from the state-owned oil monopoly.
Chavez ordered Ortega's arrest on treason charges, which can carry 26-year prison terms. Ortega fled.
Critics accused the CTV of again putting politics above worker rights -- a reputation it gained over decades of cronyism before Chavez's 1998 election. Workers were charged by union bosses to get jobs while leaders lived privileged lives.
Japan has started its first nationwide survey of animal cafes amid concerns over animal welfare, hygiene and public health, a government official said, bringing greater scrutiny to the popular but lightly regulated sector. The desktop survey, which began this month, will examine the number of facilities, the types of animals they house and the conditions they are held in, and how visitors interact with the animals. Exotic animal cafes, where visitors can interact with species ranging from otters to owls and marmots, have become popular attractions for Japanese and foreign tourists. However, researchers say some facilities keep threatened species, raising
OLD WOUNDS: Protestant marchers seized on an overturned injunction to stage a march, which drew thousands of counterprotesters to block the road in Portadown UK leaders called for calm as a tense standoff with residents seeking to halt a pro-British Protestant march through a primarily Catholic area stretched into the night on Sunday, in one of the worst crises for Northern Ireland in the past few years. The tensions were triggered after a Belfast appeal court overturned a High Court injunction in the early hours of Sunday to clear the march by the Orange Order to go ahead for the first time since 1997. The Parades Commission, Northern Ireland’s independent body regulating contentious processions, had authorized 35 Orangemen to march silently along Garvaghy Road in Portadown,
The winner of this year’s Fat Bear Week has been crowned after a nail-biting final — and it’s the son of a former champion. Backpack, a 20-year-old male beloved by rangers in Alaska for his quiet determination, edged out female fellow finalist Dancing Queen in the annual ursine eating competition at Katmai National Park. More than 2.3 million people voted in the week-long competition that sees bears unwittingly jostle in a series of head-to-head contests to decide which one of them has most impressively piled on the pounds ahead of hibernation. Viewers watch a livestream of the enormous animals as they scoop salmon
A shark stranded in a canal in the South Korean port of Busan has become the country’s latest wildlife sensation, with the city saying about 600,000 people have flocked to see it over the past two weeks. The 3.5m shark was first spotted in a narrow waterway in North Port on Sept. 18. As the days passed without the shark finding its way back to the ocean, authorities on Tuesday launched a rescue operation to guide it out, but the effort failed. The South Korean Coast Guard and other agencies deployed vessels to spray jets of water behind the shark
RSS