Trade union mobilisation, resistance and political action of social workers in Portugal

Abstract

In Portugal, the institutionalisation of social work took place in the 1930s under the veil of the Estado Novo (New State), a right-wing conservative dictatorship. Social workers were expected to act within the ideological and political tracks of the authoritarian regime. They were thus instrumental to the dictatorship’s authority and, as such, served the regime’s moral order while acting as agents of social conformity and control. However, from the 1960s onwards, signs of rupture began to be noticed, corresponding to an increasing involvement of social work professionals, students and educators in political movements, often engaging in oppositional, resistance and subversive activities against the regime. The profession, framed in the context of a fascist-prone corporativist state, was deemed to serve its purposes and was collectively represented, from the 1950s, by a single professional trade union. The leadership of the union was, as in many other corporativist organisations, occupied by high-profile senior social workers trusted by the regime. This continued until 1970, when younger social workers pulled the union away from the Estado Novo’s political power. This chapter focuses on this process of renovation, steered from inside the profession in direct connection with the social and political mobilisations against the dictatorship that were happening outside the ranks of social work. The changes observed in the Portuguese social workers’ trade union at this time show a process of renovation taking place in the profession during a period when collective action and civil liberties were severely limited and violently repressed.