At the state-owned Volta Redonda
steel mill in the state of Rio de Janeiro,
conditions were hellish. Workers en-
dured extremes of heat and noise as
iron struck iron endlessly and blast
furnaces spewed toxic dust into the
air. Wearing no protective clothing,
they labored for 10-hour shifts. Due to
Brazil’s voracious rate of
inflation-measured at an annual
1000%–they suffered a 26% decline
in real wages since their last pay ad-
justment. And the Brazilian National
Steel Company refused to implement
the provision in the country’s new
constitution which sets the standard
work shift for industries with uninter-
rupted production at a maximum of
six hours.
Stanley A. Gacek is a labor attorney
and Assistant Director of International
Affairs for the United Food and
Commercial Workers International
Union. He recently attended the third
national congress of Brazil’s Unified
Central of Workers (CUT) and is
writing a larger work on Brazilian
labor.
On November 7, thousands of
Volta Redonda’s workers commenced
a sit-down strike. Early the next morn-
ing 500 army regulars and federal po-
lice arrived with tanks and automatic
weapons. Over the next 24 hours, at
least three strikers were killed and fifty
wounded.
While the pages of modern Brazil-
ian labor history are filled with violent
incidents of state repression, outright
massacres are rare. Voters reacted to
the Volta Redonda killings at the polls
one week later, electing a number of
progressive candidates in nationwide
municipal elections. The Left-labor
Workers Party (PT) scored impressive
victories in several cities, including
Sdo Paulo, the second-largest metropo-
lis in the Western Hemisphere. There,
52 year-old professor, social worker
and PT activist Luiza Erundina de-
feated Paulo Maluf, a right-wing poli-
tician known for his reactionary popu-
lism and corruption.
During the weeks leading up to the
elections, hundreds of thousands of
workers struck the steel, petroleum,
electrical utility and municipal serv-
ices industries. On October 17,
800,000 federal employees in 17 of
the 23 governmental ministries walked
off their jobs. Strikers shut down ev-
ery oil refinery in the country on No-
vember 11. Rio’s municipal workers
struck their bankrupt employer for
several weeks.
Preventing Solidarity
In the last decade of Brazil’s “tran-
sition to democracy” there have been
more changes in the country’s labor
relations than in the previous fifty
years. These changes have occurred in
the streets, on the picket lines and at
the bargaining table, while the official
labor code remains virtually intact. As
these dramatic changes
continue-direct bargaining between
employers and workers, labor con-
tracts which contradict labor court
decisions, illegal strikes-they
threaten to isolate the official labor
system and the judges, conservative
labor leaders and employers who have
a stake in it.
In 1943 the populist regime of
Getulio Vargas expanded the existing
corporatist system by enacting the
Consolidation of Brazilian Labor Laws
(CLT). The CLT put labor squarely
under state control and established
mechanisms that effectively impeded
solidarity. Workers were strictly rep-
resented by three levels of union or-
ganization which continue to this day:
1) the sindicato, which represents
workers of one professional category
generally in one city or municipio
(similar to a U.S. county or township);
2) the federation, which combines at
least five sindicatos, generally of the
same category and usually at the state
level; and 3) the confederation, which
includes at least three federations and
represents the professional category at
the national level.
Under the CLT, sindicatos provide
legal, social and medical benefits to
their members and “conciliate” dis-
putes between workers and employ-
ers. The Labor Ministry collects an
annual trade union tax, amounting to
one day’s wages, from all organizable
workers whether or not they are actu-
ally union members. Five percent of
the revenues support the national con-
federations, 15% go to the federations,
60% to the sindicatos, and the remain-
ing 20% are designated for a “special
Unarmed strikers face off with the army at the Volta Redonda steel mill
KiEUK UN ILit AMEKICAS
Aemployment and salary account,”
which supports the operations of the
Labor Ministry. The funds are held in
the Bank of Brazil and can be frozen
by the authorities at any time if unions
do not comply with expenditure re-
quirements. Unions can use the funds
only for the legal, medical and social
assistance programs outlined in the
CLT.
Unlike the United States, union
recognition in Brazil depends entirely
on the government, not on the em-
ployer. To be recognized as a union,
an association representing at least
one-third of the workers of a given
category in the municipio must submit
a petition to the Labor Ministry. If two
associations are competing for repre-
sentation of the same category, the
Ministry chooses the more solvent and
“active” of the two. Naturally the more
quiescent associations get the govern-
ment’s nod of approval.
If a union violates the CLT, the
Labor Ministry can intervene and re-
move the leadership. Violation of the
strike law has been a frequent pretext
for state intervention. There are nu-
merous requirements that must be met
for a strike to be legal, and workers
from industries defined as “essential”
cannot strike at all.* Even when a
strike is legal, the labor courts step in
to settle the impasse by binding arbi-
tration. Once their decision is
made-often just a few days into a
dispute-the union is prohibited from
continuing the strike.
Challenging the Old Order
Brazilian workers began to seri-
ously challenge this entrenched order
in the late 1970s with strikes of un-
precedented magnitude. Since 1980
they have achieved worker-controlled
plant committees, agreements from
employers to adjust grievances at the
shop-floor level and limited job secu-
rity guarantees. They produced these
impressive results with strikes that
were unlawful, bargaining that was
direct, and agreements that lacked the
imprimatur of the labor courts.
The creation of labor centrals rep-
resenting workers at a national level,
regardless of category or geography,
has been one of the more significant
developments of the last decade. In
1981, when Brazil was in the throes of
a massive recession, unionists from all
over the country convened the Na-
tional Conference of the Working
Class to discuss the creation of a uni-
fied central. But philosophical and
personality differences got in the way.
One faction, the autenticos, consisted
of unionists who had led the massive
strikes of the late 1970s. They de-
manded a complete break from the
corporatist order-total trade union
freedom, including abolition of the
trade union tax. The other major bloc
consisted of labor leaders advocating
class unity and collaboration with the
state to gain benefits for all workers.
Those who favored this
approach-which has long been advo-
cated by the Brazilian Communist
Party-believe that the state’s pater-
nalism has done some good for Brazil-
ian labor.
Over the next two years, the fac-
tions attempted some reconciliation
but to no avail. In 1983 the autnticos
formed the Unified Central of Work-
ers (CUT), which claims to represent
CUT president Jair Meneguelli addresses striking metalworkers
* These include water, electrical energy,
petroleum, gas and production of other
combustible materials, banks, transport,
communications, loading and unloading,
hospitals, clinics, maternity services, phar-
macies and public services at the munici-
pal, state and federal level, as well as other
industries defined as essential by presiden-
tial decree.
VOLUME XXII, NO. 6 (MARCH 1989)
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over nine million workers. In 1986 the
second group formed the General Cen-
tral of Workers (CGT), and it claims
over 20 million members. Both agree
on agrarian reform, employment sta-
bility and the demand for a forty-hour
work week. They have serious differ-
ences on the trade union tax, trade un-
ion autonomy and freedom of associa-
tion. The labor centrals are not offi-
cially linked with any political party,
although most CUT leaders are mem-
bers of the PT. Most of the CGT lead-
ership has been associated with the
Brazilian Democratic Movement Party
(PMDB) and the newly-formed Bra-
zilian Social Democratic Party
(PSDB), organizations of the center-
Left that are descendants of the gov-
ernment-sanctioned opposition of the
late 1960s and early 1970s.
Factions within the CUT include
the majority Articulagao bloc which
favors the mass organizing and inde-
pendent radical unionism of recent
years and opposes subservience to a
sectarian line. Other
factions-independent socialists, com-
munists and Trotskyists-clamor for
more rank-and-file control of the na-
tional executive and a more overtly
political agenda. The Articulawao won
nine of the 15 seats on the CUT’s na-
tional executive committee at its third
national congress held in Belo Hori-
zonte in September 1988.In the CGT, militants of the ortho-
dox communist Left, while not numer-
ous, wield considerable influence. The
pro-Moscow Brazilian Communist
Party (PCB) supports CGT president
Joaquim Dos Santos Andrade and en-
courages contacts with communist-
bloc unions. Also in the CGT is the
October 8th Revolutionary Movement
(MR8), one of several guerrilla groups
that fought against the military dicta-
torship in the late 1960s and early
1970s. It claims ties to Cuba and the
Guevaran revolutionary tradition. Un-
til 1987 the pro-Albanian Communist
Party of Brazil (PC do B) had consid-
erable presence in the CGT, but in that
year its labor militants walked out of a
plenary session to protest certain poli-
cies and leaders of the CGT.
Given its anticommunist position,
it is ironic that the American Institute
for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)
has opted to support the CGT. It de-
scribes the CGT as being:
made up of unions whose
membership is composed of mostly
PMDB…followers, approximately
90%. The remaining 10% are of
mostly democratic left orientation
(the PC, MR8 and PC do B). These
three groups are considered moderate
today because they have expelled the
radical left from their membership.
Those radicals who are still calling
for armed struggle can be found
militating in the PT.
Labor and the Constitution
president Jose Sarney says Brazil s new constitution is too radical and
makes the country “ungovernable.” It
proscribes various types of job dis-
crimination, calls for reduction of the
work week, creates new benefits, ex-
pands old entitlements, and reduces
some of the state intervention which
has abridged freedom of association.
Yet the old paternalistic controls and
limits on collective worker action re-
main basically intact.
Labor’s efforts to reduce the work
week from 48 to 40 hours were sty-
mied by a powerful corporate counter-
lobby, forcing a compromise of 44
hours. In response to the provision that
allows women 120 days of pregnancy
leave with pay (as well as free day-
care and pre-school education), em-
ployers fired scores of their female
employees. The workers at the Volta
Redonda plant were victims of the
government’s unremitting hostility to
the constitution when they demanded
their newly won right to a six-hour
shift.
The constitution eliminates the
government’s power to intervene in a
union, compelling the Labor Ministry
to pursue regular judicial channels in
order to discipline unions and their
leaders. However this victory may
prove to be a pyrrhic one if the Brazil-
ian judiciary adopts a vengeful policy
against trade unions. The constitution
also maintains the trade union tax, one
of the state’s most powerful controls
over the labor movement.
The right to strike provision has
been heralded as the greatest victory
for workers in the constitution. But
another provision qualifies this right
by leaving it to the statutory law to
define the “essential industries” where
The army takes over at the Volta Redonda strike
6
strikes are prohibited. Thus, the origi-
nal definition of these industries con-
tinues, as do the severe penalties for
violating the strike law. Moreover, the
Supreme Labor Court ruled in Novem-
ber that the existing strike law is in-
deed constitutional. Finally, it is not
clear how the newly created constitu-
tional rights will be implemented and
enforced.
Continuing challenges to the sys-
tem may precipitate further reactions
such as those suffered by the workers
at Volta Redonda. The constitution
guarantees the military’s right to inter-
vene when “national security” is at
risk. Yet the last decade has seriously
shaken the foundations of Brazil’s cor-
poratist structure, and it may be im-
possible to turn back the clock. It re-
mains to be seen just how the PT’s
victory at the polls will thwart the
government’s violent impulses from
becoming the official policy of keep-
ing workers in line.
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