Brazilian Labor Movement Research Articles

Les évolutions du syndicalisme brésilien dans les années 1990 Une étude de cas dans le bâtiment

What is really “new” in the “new Brazilian labor movement”? The answer to this question calls for examining the routine practices of the everyday job of organizing. To do this, a participant observation method was used to study a labor union in the building industry in a town in southeastern Brazil. Several dimensions turn out to be important for understanding union activities in the late 1990s: the relations (often involving a lack of understanding) of union leaders with the working class base; internal conflicts (sometimes resulting from conflicts of interests among various categories of workers); relations with bosses (sometimes characterized by a pragmatism tending toward consensus); and labor union policies (more or less homogeneous or innovative depending on the parties involved and the economic as well as political circumstances). This case study suggests new axes for research.

Entre a ruptura e a continuidade: visões da história do movimento sindical brasileiro

O artigo analisa algumas das visoes que se consolidaram no processo de construcao de identidades politicas ocorrido em torno do chamado sindicalismo, em fins dos anos 70. Estas visoes, produzidas na articulacao entre os estudos academicos e o movimento social, tinham como uma de suas caracteristicas a ideia de ruptura entre o passado e o presente do movimento sindical de nosso pais, estabelecendo um corte entre o que seriam o novo e o velho sindicalismo. Levando em conta nao so aquele periodo, mas tambem acompanhando o desenvolvimento posterior do e dos estudos acerca do sindicalismo brasileiro, indico os limites do enfoque baseado nesta rigida separacao. Alem disso, apresento uma possibilidade de interpretacao alternativa que da maior enfase a continuidade de determinadas praticas no interior da experiencia organizativa dos trabalhadores. Nesse sentido, aponto, a partir de alguns exemplos, como o teria continuado certas tradicoes ja existentes no meio sindical.

L'oubli de l'anarchisme au Brésil : la problématique de la (re) construction de l'identité ouvrière

Joey Alves de Seixas, Forgetting Anarchism in Brazil. The problematic of the (Re) Construction of Working-class Identity ; In the 1920s, the Brazilian labor movement was heavily influenced by anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism. In contrast, working-class identity today is characterized by images of apathy and weakness. These negative images, which are emotionally charged, are conditioned by the loss of memory concerning the earlier period of working-class history. In effect, the reconstruction of working-class identity is in great part dependent upon the recovery of historical memory.

Practice and Ideology: A Cautionary Note on the Historian’s Craft

Joel Wolfe's article in this issue examines a formative event in the development of the twentieth-century Brazilian labor movement: the 1917 general strike in Sao Paulo. He focuses on two key relationships: between leaders and led, and between working-class women and class institutions largely run by men. Despite advancing an innovative approach to the topic, Wolfe's article suffers from problems of evidence, historiography, and conceptualization. Wolfe introduces his general thesis at the outset by recounting a 1914 antiwar rally in the city of Sao Paulo where anarchist and socialist speakers are heckled by unnamed in the crowd who demand that they address the immediate problems. Wolfe uses this incident to suggest that there existed antipathy between the city's workers and labor activists in 1914. Indeed, he later talks of the workers' protests during the August 1914 antiwar rally. On the basis of the evidence cited, however, these claims go well beyond the data at hand. If one cannot, as the author rightly argues, equate Sao Paulo's labor radicals with the working-class rank and file, it is equally clear that a group of hecklers, their numbers and identities unclear, should not be viewed as the voice of the tens of thousands of workers of Sdo Paulo. Indeed, do we even know that the hecklers were workers? And which of the two newspapers cited is the source for the account of this alleged heckling? If his main source is the conservative Correio Paulistano, organ of the state's Partido Republicano Paulista, the incident may not have occurred as narrated, given the newspaper's conviction that labor radicals were always outside, usually foreign, agitators who never spoke for the legitimate interests of the masses. His account of the episode is strengthened if it is drawn from the

Working Class Strategies in the Transition to Democracy in Brazil

The Brazilian labor movement played an instrumental role in the demise of Brazil's authoritarian regime. As one of the few highly organized and institutionalized social actors in Brazil in the late 1970s, the labor movement led massive strikes, demonstrations, and rallies protesting the military government's policies and demanding a return to democracy.' This article examines how organized labor in Brazil articulated and defended its interests in the period of political reconstruction and democratization. How did the labor movement act? Why did it act as it did? And what are the consequences for the labor movement and the consolidation of democracy? To study these questions, this article applies two approaches derived from the literature on transitions to democracy: the coup poker and multilayered chess game analogies. While both approaches are useful in establishing broad parameters for analysis of the strategies available to labor movements and the impact of those strategies on such movements and the emerging democratic system, I show with the Brazilian case that they ignore several motivating factors and possible outcomes of those strategies. And, in analyzing the Brazilian case, I suggest that, although certain political, economic, and organizational constraints on the working class are greater during political transitions than under a stable democratic regime, the labor movement's strategies and the results of those strategies are very similar during both periods.

Update on the Brazilian Labor Movement

Since the strike waves of 1978-1980, Brazil's new union movement has grown far beyond its initial base in the heavily concentrated automobile industry in Sao Paulo's ABC industrial belt. Combative union leaders have won control of major unions in a number of different sectors all over Brazil, particularly in metalworking, chemicals, and bank workers unions. In many other unions, traditional leaders responded to the upsurge of organizing with a new combativeness, recognizing that hanging on to their posts in a changed context required more than a monopoly over the official machinery. All sectors of the labor movement now pay lip service to the need for unions to become autonomous from the Brazilian state and to the demand for recognition of the right to strike. In spite of widespread agreement around these points, however, most unions still do not consider conditions ripe for a successful struggle around these issues; and some union leaders clearly benefit from the system as it is. Brazil's unions remain subordinated to the Ministry of Labor, which retains broad powers including the right to declare unions legal or not, oversee their finances, replace recalcitrant union leaders with its own appointees, and judge the legality of labor agreements in its labor courts. Perhaps the most important instrument of subordination is the union tax, one day's pay per year withheld from all workers' salaries and distributed by the Ministry of Labor to all unions, which is based not on the number of union members, but on the number of workers in the branch represented by that union. This system of financing reduces the incentive to recruit new union members, as the union's welfare services-financed by the union tax-are reserved for union members only. The union tax is still the most important source of financing for most unions; and most fear that an immediate abolition of the tax,

Labor and the Left in Brazil, 1890-1921: A Movement Aborted

iiis essay examines the forces that retarded and ultimately destroyed early trade unionism in Brazil. Studying the inefficacy of the Brazilian movement, however, raises a broader question: why have some working-class movements failed, while others under apparently similar circumstances have survived and even flourished? We still lack the information for a definitive answer to this question. But insight is gained by viewing Brazil and making some comparative references to labor movements in general. Such references are also made to the particular experience of Argentina, a nation whose trade union development most closely approximated that of Brazil. The central focus will be on Sdo Paulo, Santos, and Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian cities that formed the center of industry, commerce, and working-class unrest during the period under consideration. European immigrants dominated Brazil's first labor movement. From the beginning of the movement, immigrants, principally from Italy, Portugal, and Spain, constituted the majority of the working class in Sdo Paulo and Santos and a sizeable minority in Rio de Janeiro (then the federal capital). In all three cities immigrants comprised the major part of the rank and file as well as the leadership of the trade unions.' The Brazilian labor movement can be dated from the 1890s when a

Union Structure and Labor Organization in the Recent History of Brazil

In this article we analyze the limits imposed by the union structure (established by Getulio Vargas) on the Brazilian labor movement in the last 30 years. In the first part we discuss the 1964 coup and its impact on the unions and the working class. In the second part we discuss the historic roots of the lack of labor resistance to the coup and to the first period of military dictatorship. In the third part we take up the first forms of labor resistance in 1967-1968 (above all the Osasco strike); and in the last section we study the new forms of struggle beginning in 1969, under the impact of super-exploitation of the working class.