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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 198, Vol. 41 No. 5, September
2014, 184–199DOI: 10.1177/0094582X14545972© 2014 Latin American
Perspectives
184
The Brazilian Labor Movement under PT Governmentsby
Andréia Galvão Translated by Laurence Hallewell
Neoliberalism in Brazil led the labor movement to adopt a more
conciliatory and col-laborative stance, emphasizing negotiation and
becoming receptive to the idea of social partnership. The
discrediting of neoliberalism made it possible for the Partido dos
Trabalhadores to win the presidency in 2002, and the unions had an
important role in this victory. Rather than changing the direction
of the labor movement, however, the PT gov-ernments have created
political and economic conditions that reinforce it by expanding
the institutional mechanisms available for collaboration with the
state and strengthening the defense of immediate economic interests
by creating conditions that allowed wage increases and improvements
in collective agreements. This success in economic terms contrasts
with the unions’ limited political intervention, an expression of a
social democracy with-out reform, confined to what is possible.
O neoliberalismo no Brasil incentivou o movimentou sindical a
assumir uma posição mais voltada para a conciliação e a
colaboração, que prioriza a negociação e se torna recep-tiva ao
conceito de parceria social. Foi o desprestígio do neoliberalismo
que possibilitou o triunfo do Partido dos Trabalhadores na eleição
presidencial de 2002 e os sindicatos des-empenharam um papel
importante nessa vitória. Entretanto, ao invés de mudar o rumo do
movimento sindical, os governos PT têm criado as condições
políticas e econômicas que reforçam a posição atual desse
movimento, aumentando os mecanismos institucionais para colaboração
com o Estado e estimulando a defesa dos interesses econômicos
imediatos em um contexto que vem permitindo aumentos salariais e
melhoras nos acordos coletivos. Ao sucesso econômico se contrapõe a
limitada ação política dos sindicatos, expressão de uma democracia
social sem reformas, que se restringe à gestão do possível.
Keywords: Labor unions, Social partnership, Neoliberalism,
Social democracy, PT administrations
The labor movement in Brazil suffered greatly from the
neoliberalism that was implemented in the 1990s and soon became
entrenched. Beyond the politi-cal and economic changes introduced
in that decade, a questioning of the ideo-logical bases of the
labor movement and a confusion of political identities had a strong
impact on the movement, transforming its concepts and its practices
(Hyman, 1994). Moving toward a more conciliatory and collaborative
stance, the so-called propositive unionism represented a change in
the direction of the largest and most active of Brazil’s
federations of unions, the Central Única dos
Andréia Galvão is a professor of political science at the
Universidade de Campinas and the author of Neoliberalismo e reforma
trabalhista no Brasil (2013). Laurence Hallewell was, until his
retirement, Latin Americanist librarian at the Lehman Library,
Columbia University. The author thanks her LAP partners for their
criticisms and suggestions with regard to the first drafts of this
text.
545972LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X14545972LATIN AMERICAN
PERSPECTIVESGalvão / BRAZILIAN LABOR UNDER PT
GOVERNMENTSresearch-article2014
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Galvão / BRAZILIAN LABOR UNDER PT GOVERNMENTS 185
Trabalhadores (Unique Workers’ Central—CUT), leading it to
emphasize nego-tiation and become receptive to the idea of social
partnership. It and its chief rival, the Força Sindical (Union
Force—FS), increasingly converged toward “citizen” or “civic”
unionism—in practice, a service-oriented unionism whereby unions
offered their members services that hitherto had been provided by
the state, favoring the replacement of universal policies with
alternatives of limited applicability and reach. Some of these
services, such as programs for providing professional
qualifications, contributed to spreading the neoliberal agenda in
that they promoted individualizing the problem of unemployment and
placing the blame for being out of work on the workers themselves
(Galvão, 2006).1
This change, however, was not absolute or definitive, nor did it
lack contra-dictions. The negative economic conditions prevailing
at the end of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration left
neoliberalism discredited and made it possible for Lula da Silva to
win the elections of 2002. The unions had an important role in this
victory and came to political prominence in the Partido dos
Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) administration, as is evidenced
by the number of union leaders who were given posts in the new
federal government (D’Araujo, 2009), their participation in the
tripartite organizations it set up, and some of the measures it
introduced.
My objective in this paper is to analyze the Brazilian labor
movement since the PT came to power in an attempt to determine
whether its political preeminence has led to any change in the
direction of the political developments that I have just outlined.
My main hypothesis is that the PT governments, rather than altering
the situation, created political and economic conditions that
reinforced it by empha-sizing two apparently opposite conceptions
of unions: social partnership and the defense of immediate economic
interests.2 A second hypothesis is that the linking of these two
conceptions is the result of the impact of neoliberalism on social
democratic organizations and parties, a development in which I
consider it fair to include the PT (Samuels, 2004). Neoliberalism
has created a peculiar form of social democracy, one that eschews
reform—according to Lanzaro (2008: 50) a “creole” or cross-breed
social democracy marked by a certain continuation of the
neolib-eral model and by an “effectively reformist program, albeit
a quite modest one.”3
This paper has three parts. The first part seeks briefly to lay
the bases for the main hypothesis. The second deals with the
process of labor movement reorgani-zation started by the PT’s
achieving power at the federal level, pointing out the differences
and similarities between the union federations, their principal
demands, and some of the conflicts they were involved in. The third
part brings us back to some elements of the political situation
that can be used to characterize the PT administrations. I am not
going to discuss economic policy or the develop-ment model in any
detail. Rather, I will concentrate on the factors that make it
easier to understand the reorganization of the Brazilian labor
movement and how its relationship with the PT governments4 helped
them carry out their program.
InstItutIonal PartIcIPatIon In a context of economIc Growth
During Lula da Silva’s first presidency, the government
broadened the insti-tutional participation of unions—something that
the 1988 Constitution had
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186 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
made possible and that was implemented in the 1990s with the
establishment of councils to supervise welfare and pension
funds—through the creation of two tripartite organs, the Forum
Nacional do Trabalho (National Labor Forum—FNT) and the Conselho de
Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Council for Economic and Social
Development—CDES), to debate the reforms they were seeking to
implement. The broadening of institutional channels and the close
relationship between government and a sizable part of the union
movement affected the conceptions and strategies of the unions,
contributing to strengthening the outlook for social partnership.
But the legislative changes planned were never discussed by the
FNT, nor was the social security reform introduced in 2003 ever
effectively discussed by the CDES, giving rise to the impression
that these forums were more for consultation than for policy
mak-ing. For Ricci (2010: 16), government “had open debates with
organizations and unions but brought them into the state with
respect to specific policies based on agreements and partnerships,
rather as a sort of dependency, given that, in contrast to the
neocorporative logic, these social agents were never effectively
engaged in drawing up public policies and the process of decision
making.”5 Another interpretation close to this one is that the
government adopted meas-ures to “nullify the autonomous and
independent strength of the union move-ment through a constant
co-opting of its leadership and a ‘state take-over’ of workers’
organizations” (Druck, 2006: 330–331).6
Union staff, members of the government, and union leaders close
to the gov-ernment have offered an opposite evaluation. For
Clemente Ganz Lúcio (2010) technical director of the Departamento
Intersindical de Estatistica e Estudos Socio-econômicos (Inerunion
Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Research—DIEESE)
unionism has played a positive role, influ-encing the political
agenda to the point that the government has made room for the
unions’ agenda and recognized the unions as legitimate
intermediaries. For Antonio Augusto de Queiroz (2007), director of
documentation of the Departamento Intersindical de Assessoria
Parlamentar (Interunion Department of Parliamentary Advice—DIAP),
“except for public service pension reform and changes in the labor
rights of employees of small and micro businesses, [the government]
has behaved in agreement with the thinking of most of the labor
movement.” For Luiz Dulci (2010: 143), director of the Instituto
Lula, social movements have strengthened the legitimacy of the Lula
presidency and its ability to govern:
In contradiction to what its detractors assert, participatory
democracy is most definitely not a process of the state’s co-opting
the social movements. . . . The popular organizations discussed
things with the state and voiced their opinion on matters of public
policy, retaining complete freedom to criticize and to orga-nize
protests. It was not rare for them to disagree openly with
government. . . . This was what happened during Lula’s first
administration with regard to some important aspects of
macroeconomic policy.
These analyses offer us topics to ponder about the relationship
between the unions and the government, but they do not seem enough
for us fully to com-prehend the difficulties and contradictions of
the labor movement vis-à-vis left-wing governments. To get beyond
the co-optation–autonomy dichotomy,
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Galvão / BRAZILIAN LABOR UNDER PT GOVERNMENTS 187
we must take into account their common political origins, the
close relationship between the CUT and the PT, and the fact that,
consequently, they share a polit-ical and ideological goal, an aim
referred to by one group of analysts as “neode-velopmentalism.”7 In
other words, one has to consider the transformations undergone both
by the party and by the section of the labor movement close to it
and the reciprocal relations between unionism and politics.
Participation by the labor movement in administrative decision
making has led the corporation-owned mass media to refer
pejoratively to the PT adminis-trations as a “labor-union republic”
(Brandt and Tosta, 2008; Felício, 2005; Loyola, 2010). This
nickname is based on a mistaken diagnosis. It is clear that the
Brazilian labor movement has never before been so involved in
influencing policy at the federal level and that it is playing a
role in driving public policy that it had never had a chance to
play before. Union participation and the vis-ibility of its effects
do not mean that the unions decide the direction of the political
agenda, although they may have some influence on it.8 Their
interven-tion is limited: little is ever discussed and even less is
implemented. Its most successful proposal has been readjusting the
minimum wage, the product of an agreement negotiated between the
union federations and the government in 2007, which provides for
the rate to be corrected annually in line with each previous year’s
inflation and any change in Brazil’s gross domestic product in that
period.
The policy adjusting the minimum wage, along with the campaigns
to reduce the workweek to 40 hours9 and to end dismissal without
just cause (through the government’s signing of the International
Labor Organization’s Convention 158), was one of the few demands
aimed at consolidating and extending social rights of universal
application presented in this period. Generally speaking, the
unions have been concerned with more specific demands, accepting
the idea that conditions differ in different sectors of the labor
market. This idea has justified the fragmentation of negotiations
and rules along the lines pursued by the sectoral “chambers” in the
1990s.10 Thus citizenship is understood not as guaranteeing
universal rights but as a way of securing citizens’ participation
in the market—which explains the growing concern about having a
bank account, access to credit, and the capacity to acquire
consumer goods.11
The unions’ relationship to the state is no longer seen in terms
of social class as it was by a sizable portion of the left,
including the unions, during the 1980s in the context of the
struggle against the military dictatorship. The political and
ideological closeness of the unions to the PT governments makes it
easy for them to approach the state (which has ceased to be looked
upon as an adversary) and give priority to institutional action.
Pressure is now put on the state by presenting proposals rather
than being linked to the mobilization required to achieve hegemony
at the level of civil society.12 Thus the “struggle for hegemony”
comes down to just having a project, while any reference to social
class in the project may vanish or be diluted in a politics of
compromise.13
During this process of transformation, the unions’ shift to
making propos-als and providing services leads to a discourse on
citizenship and solidarity that is vague enough to cover a variety
of social aims, among them sustainable
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188 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
development, decent working conditions, and equitable income
distribu-tion. This allows the unions to support measures of
concern to the employ-ers and to promote initiatives in partnership
with capital. The CUT was the chief author of the 2005 Project for
Development from the Viewpoint of the Working Class, which proposed
a new development model capable of restoring the state’s ability to
make headway in overcoming neoliberalism. This proposal led to the
Working-Class Agenda for Development with Sovereignty, Democracy,
and Respect for Labor. Supported by other union federations, this
agenda included reducing the size of the primary budget surplus and
revising the law on public-private partnerships and on fiscal
responsibility. Revising rather than repealing these laws was a
paradox in that they limited the state’s capacity to make
investments (Galvão, 2012). Also paradoxical was the agenda’s the
defense of strengthening the role of banks, state enterprises, and
pension funds in financing development policy, since the pension
funds are involved in privatization and the restruc-turing of
production.14
Compared with the situation in the 1990s, the labor movement is
having considerable success in the defense of its immediate
economic interests. According to the ongoing wages and salaries
oversight maintained by the DIEESE, in 2003 18.8 percent of the
collective bargaining agreements and con-ventions analyzed produced
wage increases above the inflation rate, while 22.8 involved
increases equal to inflation and 58.4 percent increases below it.
In 2006, 83.6 percent were above it (DIEESE, 2008: 3). In 2008, at
the time of the international economic crisis, this figure fell to
78.3 percent, but in 2010 87.8 percent and in 2012 94.6 percent of
negotiations achieved wage increases in real terms (DIEESE, 2013:
3). Negotiations that took place through unions also achieved
agreement on minimum wage levels and on profit sharing. The DIEESE
data also show some recovery in the figures for strikes in some
sectors or firms. Although the system for recording strikes reveals
that the yearly aver-age number is still below that of the 1990s
(448 in 2004–2012 as opposed to 900 in 1990–1999), the number of
strikes has been increasing (from 302 in 2004 to 877 in 2012), and
they have been achieving significant outcomes for the work-ers
(Boito and Marcelino, 2010).
Although striking has not been outlawed and there been no bar to
the achievement of material gains, an inclination toward social
partnership favors political moderation. This ends up limiting
opportunities for the labor move-ment to work toward broader
political and social objectives or to oppose mea-sures that tend to
reduce social rights and those of the working class. This arouses
criticism and leads to splits in the movement.
a DIvIDeD but DynamIc labor movement
The reorganization of the labor movement under the PT
governments was started because of different union assessments of
the Lula administration and encouraged by the law recognizing union
federations.15 Three nationwide left-wing organizations emerged
from the CUT. The first was the Coordenação Nacional Lutas
(National Coordination of Struggles—CONLUTAS) in 2004.
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Galvão / BRAZILIAN LABOR UNDER PT GOVERNMENTS 189
(It changed its name in 2010 to the Central Sindical e
Popular-Conlutas [Federation of Unions and the Social Movements].)
The Intersindical (Interunion) appeared in 2006 only to split in
2008, with the two successors keeping the same name but with
distinctive subtitles: Instrumento de Luta e Organização da Classe
Trabalhadora (Instrument of Struggle and Organization of the
Working Class) and Instrumento de Luta, Unidade de Classe e
Construção de uma Nova Central (Instrument of Struggle, Class
Unity, and Forming a New Confederation). The third was the Central
Geral dos Trabalhadores e Trabalhadoras do Brazil (General
Federation of Working Men and Women of Brazil—CTB) in 2007. The
right wing of the trade union movement also reshaped itself with
the creation of two new organizations: the Nova Central Sindical de
Trabalhadores (New Union Workers’ Federation—NCST), created in 2006
and basically made up of official federations and confederations,
and the União Geral dos Trabalhadores (General Workers’ Union—UGT),
created in 2007 as a result of the merger of the Confederação Geral
do Trabalho (General Federation of Labor—CGT) (created in 1986 as a
counterweight to the CUT), the Central Autônoma dos Trabalhadores
(Workers’ Autonomous Federation—CAT) (created in 1995 and uniting
sectors of Christian unionism), and Social Democracia Sindical
(Union Social Democracy—SDS) (created in 1997 after a schism in the
FS). Apart from the CONLUTAS and the Intersindical, all of these16
became supporters of PT governments (Galvão, Tropia, and Marcelino,
2013).
The relationship to political parties is one of the factors that
helps us under-stand the division of the labor movement into rival
federations and their political stances: despite the law forbidding
financial contributions by unions to parties or candidates, some
union federations have well-known partisan links, such as the CUT
with the PT and the FS with the Democratic Labor Party (Partido
Democrático Trabalhista—PDT), while others, such as the UGT, have a
leadership split between different parties, which explains the
UGT’s talk of “neutrality” during the presidential campaign of
2010. The three organizations that emerged out of the CUT are
linked to other parties and have adopted different positions toward
the PT governments. The Partido Comunista do Brasil (Communist
Party of Brazil—PCdoB), one of the com-ponents of the alliance
sustaining these governments, is predominant in the CTB, but this
has not stopped the federation from being a critic of some PT
government policies. The Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores
Unificado (Unified Socialist Workers’ Party—PSTU) controls the
CONLUTAS and is not part of the coalition backing the PT
government. The Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (Socialism and
Freedom Party—PSOL) is the major party influenc-ing the “Class
Unity” faction of the Intersindical, which also opposes the
gov-ernment. These party links are neither formal nor exclusive and
there is nothing stopping members from joining other parties, but
they do indicate political preferences and inclinations.
The CUT, the FS, the UGT, the CTB, the NCST, and the CGTB have
had their representativeness recognized by the Ministry of Labor
and Employment. The government’s 2012 survey established that 36.7
percent of the country’s unionized workers belonged to the CUT,
13.7 percent to the FS, 11.3 percent to the UGT, 9.2 percent to the
CTB, and 8.1 percent to the NCTS.
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190 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
The CGTB lost its recognition in 2012 when it failed to reach
the minimum of 7 percent (Ministério do Trabalho e Emprego, 2012).
The CONLUTAS lacks enough associates to make use of this
prerogative, and the Intersindical does not seek official
recognition as a federation of unions. In February 2014, according
to the Labor Ministry, about 25 percent of the 10,047 registered
unions were associated with no central federation—an indication
that there is still opportunity for the federations to grow and for
competition among them to intensify.
Despite this organizational division and the support of most of
the labor movement for the PT governments, there was some unity of
action among organizations allied with the government and those
opposed to it as a response to the effects of the international
economic crisis in 2008. For example, an early series of actions
called for an increase in the minimum wage, a reduction in the
workday, and job security for all workers. A second set of actions
brought gov-ernment workers together against a proposal by the
executive branch to create state foundations under private
management that could contract workers according to the law
governing the private sector to perform tasks that were not the
sole responsibility of the state, a law that would abolish integral
pension plans for future recruits to the federal civil service and
institute complementary social insurance, and even a law that would
limit the right of public employees to strike.17 The union
federations also opposed bills originating in Congress such as one
that would prohibit any increase in federal expenditures on
person-nel and social security contributions for 10 years—which
could mean, in prac-tice, a civil service wage freeze. The cut in
expenditures introduced early in Dilma Rousseff’s presidency on the
pretext of balancing the budgets for 2011 and 2012 led to protests
and demands for the fulfillment of agreements regard-ing wage
adjustments and the restructuring of positions. The breaking of
agree-ments and the absence of any real negotiations despite the
existence of institutional channels for them led to significant and
prolonged strikes, mainly in education, a sector that is an
important base for the CONLUTAS and the Intersindical.
A third area of activity involved workers in the private sector.
Among the various conflicts of the period, an outstanding role was
played by the construc-tion workers’ strikes of 2011 and 2012 for
better working conditions, social benefits, and wages. These
strikes, often in defiance of the union leadership, paralyzed the
building of hydroelectric plants and soccer stadiums. The large
number of workers involved and the fact that the strikes affected
large-scale projects that were part of the government’s program for
increasing growth led to the opening of negotiations among
government, the corporations, and the union federations and a major
tripartite agreement that the CONLUTAS signed despite its disquiet
over some aspects of the process.
The differences between union federations reveal distinct
conceptions of the struggle that are better understood in the light
of their positions with regard to government policies such as
fiscal restraint. To limit the impact of the worldwide crisis, the
Lula government agreed to several exceptions for corporations and,
through the Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social
(National Bank for Economic and Social Development—BNDES),
financing at lower rates of interest. This policy culminated in
2011, early in the Dilma administration,
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Galvão / BRAZILIAN LABOR UNDER PT GOVERNMENTS 191
with the launching of the Greater Brazil Plan, which introduced
tax incentives intended to stimulate the economy. The most
controversial for the unions was the replacement in some sectors of
the economy of the employers’ social security contribution of 20
percent of their payrolls with new quotas of only 1–2 percent.
According to the DIAP (2012: 12), this measure’s “consequence was a
loss to the social security funds on the order of R$130
billion.”
While the CONLUTAS and the Intersindical opposed this sort of
measure, citing their concern over the social effects of the
decline in contributions, the CUT argued that the agreements would
provide compensating social benefits by retaining and increasing
formal employment, combating high labor turn-over, and ending
modern slavery and child labor. It was not opposed to layoffs in
themselves but objected to the absence of targets that would oblige
the ben-eficiaries of these government incentives to undertake the
promotion of “decent” working conditions.
Concern for uniting the struggles in the public and private
sectors, among different categories of workers, and even among
union organizations is a con-stant in the publications of the
CONLUTAS,18 partly because it is made up not only of unions but
also of social movements. It has not refrained from taking part in
strikes and the economic struggle but, on the contrary, encouraged
them and made an effort to associate the particular economic
conditions of the sector with the national and international
political situation.19 To this end it has pro-posed days of
complete work stoppage as a way of resisting the government’s
“attacks” on workers’ rights and denounced the policy of destroying
public service, manifestations of imperialism, and capitalist
aggression. It has sought to attribute a common political direction
to these struggles. However, the polit-icization that it proposes
seeks to hold the government responsible not just for its own
actions but also for those of employers (in its view, for example,
the government ought not to concede anything to employers without
first stop-ping them from ever firing anyone). It demands the
reversal of all the privatiza-tions introduced by the Fernando
Henrique Cardoso government, annulment of all auctions of
exploration rights for petroleum and natural gas, and the
reestablishment of the state petroleum monopoly without
compensation for the multinationals working in the sector through
its “Petroleum Must Be Ours!” campaign. The CUT, which proclaims
itself to be defending a proactive agenda, points to the
contradictory character of some government measures as threat-ening
established rights and protests against specific government
projects such as the privatization of seaports and airports while
not opposing the govern-ment more generally.
the ImPact of neolIberalIsm on the socIal DemocratIc left:
lImIteD reforms anD the manaGement of the
PossIble
Lula’s election was the result of a brake on neoliberalism to
which the social movements had actively contributed but also
revealed the difficulties in building any alternative economic
model. His first term was marked by a continuation of the
neoliberal macroeconomic policy that unleashed criticism on the
part of the
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192 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
social movements, the unions among them. Nevertheless, this
macroeconomic orthodoxy, applied in a favorable economic climate
and assisted by a few meas-ures of a social nature,20 did not
prevent positive economic indicators’ being reg-istered for both of
Lula’s presidential terms: significant economic growth between 2004
and 2008,21 a decline in unemployment and informal employment,22
contin-ued control of inflation, and an increase in the minimum
wage in real terms of 53.67 percent between 2002 and 2010.
These results secured wide support for the government among
ordinary people that was confirmed by Lula’s reelection in 2006 and
Dilma’s election in 2010 and an intense debate on the nature of the
development model being fol-lowed—whether there should be a clear
break from neoliberalism or only the introduction of some
modifications of the model (Novelli, 2011). For Sallum Jr. (2010),
the changes observed between Lula’s first and second terms provoked
a “liberal-developmentalist” inflection. Barbosa and Souza (2010)
identify in the growth acceleration program launched in 2007 and
the increase in public borrowing directed toward the financing of
housing and production a “new development model” in the making.
Boito Jr. (2012) considers neodevelopmen-talism the
developmentalism that is possible within the neoliberal capitalist
model for the periphery. Arcary (2011: 24) characterizes the Lula
government as a “reforming government that produced no reforms, or
very few of them.” For Singer (2012: 21–22), “Lula took advantage
of the wave of worldwide expansion and chose a middle path between
the neoliberalism of the previous decade . . . and the radical
reforms that were listed in the PT’s program. . . . [a] reform
program that was weak enough not to cause conflict.” In other
words, this was a “program of superficial and conservative
reforms—reforms that could even reproduce the neoliberal model of
capitalism” (Galvão, Boito, and Marcelino, 2011: 154).
I would like to highlight two issues: First, although
neoliberalism has been weakened, its ideology is still with us.
After all, fiscal austerity, rigor, labor mar-ket flexibilization,
and a restructuring of social security are ideas contained in the
political programs of a number of countries, including Brazil. In
fact, although the Lula government talked about defending workers’
rights, it slowed down but never interrupted the process, begun in
the 1990s, of making labor law more flexible. Thus, it never
stopped backing a labor law reform that accords with the
neoliberalizing logic that prevailed during the presidency of
Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The difference is that the Lula reform
was specifically directed toward such targets as young people just
entering the labor market and suppliers of services who were
one-person firms (the “juridical person”)—a form of labor
relationship that can be a way of hiding employment behind a legal
fiction, thus avoiding payment of the social security levy on
employees of small and micro businesses. In contrast to the
strategy of the Cardoso administration, which sought a wholesale
reform of labor legislation, this strategy has made it difficult
for workers and their unions to resist in that its individual
measures do not affect all of them (Galvão, 2008). One can
therefore identify a government toler-ance of precarious employment
or what Krein and Biavaschi (2012: 1) call “con-tradictory
movements in relation to social regulation.” This tolerance has
continued under Dilma’s government, and this has revived the
discussion of a reform of the Consolidation of Labor Laws, the
predominance of negotiation
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over legislation, and the possibility of creating new contracts
(casual, on a hourly basis) designed to guarantee workers only a
minimum of rights.
Second, this worn-out neoliberalism has its effects—albeit very
diverse ones—on the union federations that can be seen in
discussions of two key sub-jects: pensions and outsourcing. The
elimination of the social security factor (part of the pension
reform of the Cardoso government, which, seeking to encourage
workers to delay retirement, cut the value of pensions by up to 40
percent) is among the concerns of all the union federations.
Nevertheless, the CUT, the FS, the UGT, the NSCT, and the CGTB have
signed agreements with the Dilma administration to replace this
mechanism with the new 85/95 factor, which abolishes the 40 percent
reduction when the age at which a person wants his or her pension
to start and the number of years he or she has been making
contributions add up to a minimum of 85 years for a woman or 95 for
a man.23 And the government has not given up on the idea of further
reform. Outsourcing is something that all the union federations
came to criticize in the mid-2000s, viewing it as a potential cause
of job insecurity. While the CONLUTAS and the Intersindical, for
their part, wanted to see an end to outsourcing, the other union
federations were divided on how it should be regulated. Basically
this division of opinion depended on whether they thought that it
was occurring all over the economy or affecting only intermediary
activities and on what they considered was the responsibility of
the businesses using outsourcing to the outsourced workers (whether
they should be obliged to pay workers who had not been paid for
their services or simply oversee whether the subcontractors had
paid them).
Thus, although the economic and political context has changed
since the 1990s, the labor movement is still having problems coping
with the individual-istic outlook and desire for flexibility that
characterized the neoliberal era, sup-porting measures that
strengthen corporative interests and the management of the
possible. One of the CUT’s most important member unions, looked
upon as a “laboratory of employee relations,” the Sindicato dos
Metalúrgicos do ABC (the Metalworkers’ Union of São Bernardo do
Campo, [in Greater São Paulo]) presented the government in 2011
with a proposal for an agreement that would authorize unions to
negotiate agreements with employers derogating the Consolidation of
Labor Laws. This proposal was taken up by the CUT, which led to
fierce criticism along the lines of “the CUT could do better,”
while the Confederação dos Trabalhadores no Serviço Público Federal
(Federal Civil Servants’ Federation—CONDSEF), a member union of the
CUT, attacked it for putting job security at risk. The CONDSEF took
part with the CONLUTAS and the Intersindical in a national forum of
federal civil servants’ organizations attacking this proposal.
Taking advantage of the condemnation of those involved in the
so-called Mensalão scandal by the Supreme Court in 2013 these
organizations also demand the elimination of the social security
factor and the annulment of the social security reform of
2003.24
The currents of opinion in the unions opposing social
partnership and the PT governments, despite their being in a
minority, have created new opportu-nities to reinvigorate a
position critical of neoliberalism and capitalism and to revive the
debate on the autonomy of the labor movement in its relationship to
government and management. This position has its limits, however.
The
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194 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
CONLUTAS’s criticism of the “government’s neoliberal policy” is
too general and has no popular appeal, since it fails to take into
account the differences between the PT administrations and those of
Cardoso. What sort of neoliberalism are we talking about? How can
Lula be regarded as the same as Cardoso when working and living
conditions have changed? The CONLUTAS has proved inca-pable of
responding to the perception shared by the majority of workers,
even those belonging to its own member unions, who can see
improvements in their material conditions. It recognizes the
popularity of the PT governments, which at least until the
demonstrations of June 2013 had been enjoying broad support from
the working class, but it considers such support the product of an
illusion (CONLUTAS, 2010). With regard to the need to reorganize
the labor movement, it tends to overlook the role of its base: its
criticism of its rival federations is cen-tered on their
bureaucracies and the traditional behavior of their leaderships,
absolving their rank and file of any responsibility in the
process.
fInal consIDeratIons
Although they seem contradictory, the emphasis on social
partnership and the priority given to defending immediate economic
interests are complementary and are expressions of a change that
has been going on since the 1990s with the rise of propositive
unionism and its shift to the provision of services. During that
decade, however, this kind of unionism did not prosper because of
the impaired economic conditions and the adverse political
situation. All of this changed with the ascent to office of the PT.
The reinforcement of this kind of unionism has not, however, been
without conflict or criticism. Thus, while the PT governments are
creating the conditions for greater union involvement in social
partnership, they are encouraging a reorganization of the labor
movement. Splits in union organi-zation have their effect on the
dominant union federations, which suffer from defections and
internal strains, with the result that increased competition and
quarrels about representation are forcing them to change their
positions in the political debate—a debate in which neoliberalism,
however discredited, is still present. In this sense, it is
symptomatic—and paradoxical—that socialism and the class struggle,
which were present only on the margins of the CUT’s reper-toire in
the 1990s, are back in the vocabulary of the national leadership
now that the more important currents on the left have broken away
from the CUT to form rival federations.
Union reorganization expresses different conceptions and
strategies in fighting for common objectives, but it does not
hinder the unions from acting and campaigning together to resist
the loss of some of their rights. Thus nei-ther organizational
schisms nor the preference for acting in government insti-tutions
nor the support of most of them for the PT means any renunciation
of activism, protests, or strikes. The tendency of most unions
toward negotia-tion and the choice of a reduced political
perspective, restricted to defending economic and corporative
interests, makes political and ideological resistance more
difficult (limiting demands to what is realistically possible and
accept-ing less from agreements). However, ignoring the changes in
material condi-tions and the ideological impact that neoliberalism
still produces diverts the
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Galvão / BRAZILIAN LABOR UNDER PT GOVERNMENTS 195
minority federations from workers’ concerns. This helps us
understand the relatively marginal role of unions in the
demonstrations of June 2013, but that is a question that can only
be treated in another paper.
An analysis of the path of Brazilian unionism during the PT
governments reveals that unionism is not alienated from politics:
politics and the state influ-ence the unions, and the labor
movement plays a political role—a role that varies with the aim of
the organization in question. The action of the labor movement is,
clearly, marked by constraints and difficulties, but at the same
time it is full of potential, which reinforces the need to seek
ways to interpret it.
notes
1. “Propositive” and “civic” are descriptors adopted by the
labor movement during the 1990s to distinguish it from the
combative one associated with the 1980s. These categories are close
to what the literature calls “social partnership unionism” (Taylor
and Mathers, 2002; Upchurch, 2009), which assumes negotiation,
readiness to talk and make concessions, and the idea that it is
possible to reach consensus and, as a result, come to an agreement
with the state and the employ-ers. Going beyond this readiness for
dialogue and negotiation, “civic” unionism introduces a further
dimension to partnership: the provision of services to workers.
2. Although the defense of immediate economic interests is the
main task of the unions, the history of the labor movement shows
that they are not necessarily limited to performing this role. In
this sense, there is no gap between the economic struggle and the
political one; unions can intervene in politics in furtherance of
the various projects they support (Hyman and Gumbrell-McCormick,
2010; Mouriaux, 2006).
3. It is therefore different from the European social democracy
of the immediate post–World War II era, which promoted widespread
reform in the name of social justice—commitment to the welfare of
the citizenry and the defense of its universal rights. In that
context, the unions adopted an outlook that went beyond strictly
economic and corporative interests, an outlook that nowa-days is
much harder to find.
4. When I refer to the labor movement in a general way, I have
in mind the majority of its top organizations, the federations,
which basically support the PT governments. I will emphasize the
role of the CUT because it is the chief shaper of the union policy
that has dominated the period of the PT administrations.
5. Neocorporativism is a form of organization and representation
of interests marked by the social partnership that characterized
the social democratic governments in Europe just after World War
II. In the case of Brazil, however, the neocorporative arrangements
preserve the main characteristics of the state-sponsored unions of
the 1930s—the monopoly of represen-tation and the compulsory
deduction of union dues by the state. The reason the literature in
Brazil continues to call this structure “corporatist” is the
intervention of the state in the orga-nization of unions. The use
of this expression may seem anachronistic, since, after all, we now
live under a politically democratic regime. Another difficulty
comes from the fact that I use it here also in a second sense, to
refer to the defense of immediate economic interests (what Gramsci
calls “fraction egoism”).
6. The hypothesis of the co-optation of leaders and most social
movements into serving the gov-ernment’s interests has also been
developed by Coutinho (2010) on the basis of Gramsci’s concept of
transformism. Co-optation and transformism are equally featured in
Antunes’s (2011) argument.
7. For a discussion of neodevelopmentalism and its departures
from and continuities with the economic policy of the PT, see
Novelli (2011).
8. Some authors argue that “unionism has largely lost the status
of political protagonist” and that “despite a limited recovery of
the initiative and a certain presence on the political scene . . .
it has not managed to determine the direction of the political
debate as before” (Araújo and Oliveira, 2011: 110). It seems to me,
however, that even before the PT rose to power the unions did not
determine the direction of the political debate. The difference is
that in the 1980s the CUT did not limit its criticism to specific,
narrow questions of government action and was opposed to
entering
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196 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
into social pacts. Reforms then were achieved by organizing and
mobilizing the workers—that is, by the pressure of the masses—and
not by filling institutional posts or by anything that could be
regarded as class collaboration. Now, with the rise of propositive
and “civic” unionism, labor’s demands have come to incorporate the
argument of the inevitable restructuring of production,
globalization, etc., and are limited to what is “viable” or
“necessary,” which limits in advance how far it can go with the
reforms it is demanding.
9. This proposal was already part of union demands when the
Constituent Assembly was voting on the Constitution of 1988, which
included the 44-hour workweek. Legislative action to implement it
is something the CUT has been demanding since the first year of the
Lula presidency, in 2003, with the subsequent support of the other
union federations.
10. These “chambers”—agreements based on tax reductions,
freezing of wage rates, and con-cessions about keeping up the level
of employment—are characteristic of collaborative, proposi-tive
unionism and of the idea of social partnership promoted by the CUT.
This experience has often been back on the CUT’s agenda ever since
the start of the Lula administration, when it proposed a social
pact to make it feasible to reduce interest rates and return to
economic growth. During the Dilma government, the main demand along
these lines has been for a collective agree-ment with the specific
objective of authorizing unions to negotiate agreements derogating
the Consolidation of Labor Laws.
11. Most Brazilian workers have never had bank accounts because
of the instability of the labor market and the fact that so many
jobs have been outside the formalities of legal, documented
contracts.
12. This does not mean that there have been no demonstrations,
but demonstrations have been episodic and have involved only a
relatively small number of people. The biggest ones between 2004
and 2009 were the annual marches, which brought together between
20,000 and 50,000 work-ers—a very small number compared with the
size of the labor market or even the number of union members
(according to the IBGE, in 2009 there were 92 million employed,
17.7 percent of whom were unionized).
13. According to Coutinho (2010: 32), this is no real fight for
hegemony at a time of “neoliberal counterreform”: “Politics cease
to be viewed as an arena in which to fight for different concepts
of society,” becoming instead a “mere administration of the status
quo.” Stated differently, it is a form of politics that
depoliticizes, since realism and pragmatism practically remove
utopia from the political horizon.
14. Jardim (2008) demonstrates the growing interest of unions in
pension funding, which has come to be regarded as a way to
domesticate capitalism and promote social inclusion. She also
discusses the CUT’s and the FS’s creation of union pension funds,
arising from the regulation promoted by the social security reform
of 2003. D’Araujo (2009: 76) shows that the participation of union
members in Brazil’s three biggest pension funds (Previ, Petros, and
Funcef) “has always been high and has grown significantly since the
start of Lula’s presidency.”
15. Law 11,648 of 2008 establishes criteria for representation
(such as having a membership that amounts to at least 7 percent of
the country’s unionized workers and a minimum of 100 member unions)
and ensures the remit of 10 percent of the compulsory union
membership levy (paid by every worker, whether he or she is a
member of the union or not) to the officially recognized union
federation.
16. The law on recognition has contributed to the fragmentation
of the top union federations, with the result that in 2014 Brazil
has 13 rival federations. Besides those already mentioned, I will
point to the Central Geral dos Trabalhadores do Brasil (General
Workers’ Federation of Brazil—CGTB), a split from the CGT.
17. The government went so far as to issue a decree (No. 7,777
of 2012) calling for the replace-ment of striking federal civil
servants with public service workers from state governments and
municípios (local authorities at the county or city level).
18. The CONLUTAS is the organization that has offered the most
systematic explanation of its differences from the federation that
gave birth to it. The CTB does not express any great political or
ideological differences from the CUT. Identifying the distinctive
features of the Intersindical would require a more detailed
analysis due to its own split.
19. These characteristics have somehow allowed the CONLUTAS to
be labeled “social move-ment unionism,” a unionism that stresses
striking and seeks to express not just its specific con-cerns but
broader political demands such as forging links with other social
movements (Turner
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and Hurd, 2001). However, another term seems to me more
appropriate for the highly militant and politicized type of
unionism it represents: “radical unionism,” which is characterized
by mobilization, recourse to strikes, and a strong leftist
ideological opposition to both employers and government (Connolly
and Darlington, 2012).
20. Such as the Bolsa Família program, the microcredit loan
schemes, and the lending scheme for family farms.
21. Yearly growth in the gross domestic product went from 5.7
percent in 2004 to 3.2 percent in 2005, 4 percent in 2006, 6.1
percent in 2007, and 5.2 percent in 2008. Despite a decline to −0.3
per-cent in 2009, it returned to 7.5 percent in 2010 (IBGE,
2013).
22. Unemployment fell from 21.8 percent in 2003, Lula’s first
year in office, to 14.1 percent in 2008 and continued falling
despite the world economic crisis, reaching 11.5 percent in 2010
(its lowest index during Lula’s presidency). The percentage of
informal employment in the first decade of the century declined
from 47.7 percent to 43.4 percent (DIEESE, 2012: 169).
23. According to those who signed the agreement, the proposal
“takes into account the need to preserve the system’s
sustainability, not just end up with a formula for calculation.”
(Centrais Sindicais, 2012, my italics). One must remember that the
end of the social security factor was approved by both houses of
Congress in 2010 but vetoed by Lula.
24. The campaign’s slogan is “Reform of purchased pensions must
be done away with!”
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