Brazilian Trade Union Impasse
Marcio Pochmann is a researcher at the Center for Labor Economics Studies and Full Professor at the Economics Institute of the State University of Campinas. This text was originally written for issue 64 of the WBO Newsletter, published on April 28, 2023. Fill in the form at the bottom of the text to access and subscribe to the WBO weekly newsletter in English.
The structural foundations from which Brazilian trade unionism emerged are linked to the effort since the second half of the nineteenth century to move from centuries of primitive agricultural production to a modern urban and industrial society. From the publication of the Republican Manifesto in 1870 to the Revolution of 1930, the objective conditions were created by which Brazil was, together with South Korea, the country with a colonial and peripheral past that between the 1930s and 1980s belatedly industrialized.
But with a passive and subordinate entry into neoliberal globalization from 1990 onwards, the urban and industrial society, which had developed, suffered a strong regressive process, accompanied, as a consequence, by the crumbling of the material bases by which unions were structured throughout the twentieth century. With deindustrialization, the expansionist economic cycle of the past was reversed, causing the country to remain imprisoned in a long stagnate phase based on old wealth in the finance sector and the return to the model of exporting primary goods
As a result, a growing population, which was unable to meet the requirements of typical capitalist activities, faced the freezing of wages and the downgrading of employment opportunities that had been protected by social and labor rights. There was also an increase in activities associated with the subsistence economy made up of small businesses and service providers without any identification with or a sense of belonging to expressions of collective labor. Because of this, the first quarter of the twenty-first century has been characterized by an impasse among Brazilian trade unions. In this regard, there has been a defense of public policies committed to the restoration of social and labor rights taken away by neoliberal measures and the strengthening of trade unions that are typical of industrial societies.
“Occupational possibilities are limited to the spread of precariousness, a trend that is increasingly distant from the relationship of capital and labor”
Although justifiable and necessary, proposals of a reparatory nature seem insufficient, especially if the structural and objective conditions of the past, which no longer exist, are considered. Reparations for labor performed in the past is related to the present, which is important, especially when the present is not undergoing structural changes. However, as seems to happen nowadays due to epic changes, there is a strategic focus on the relationship of the present to the future in the process of the formation of a new historical epoch.
At the same time, there are new requirements related to the transition from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age. Policies of reparation tend to address expectations associated with the idea that a given historical era, namely, the Industrial Age, will continue, while the current reality points to structural changes as reflected in the Digital Age.
It is in this context that daily work is consolidated and connected to the demands of a new and unprecedented conception of work that emerges from the Digital Age. For example, the separation between productive and reproductive labor, that is, work inside and outside the home, among other trends, ceases to make sense, since digitalization invaded and contaminated the borders that until then were justified during the Industrial Age.
The available occupations move from the temporal axis that connects the perspective of a better future to the one that results from the way in which Brazil has been repositioning itself in the new International Division of Labor. In the Digital Age, the International Division of Labor separates two distinct groups of countries: those that produce and export digital goods and services and those that consume them through importation, as practically nothing is produced domestically.
Brazil is part of the second group of countries increasingly dependent on imports, as it is currently the fourth largest consumer market for digital goods and services in the world. In this scenario, occupational possibilities are limited to the spread of precariousness, a trend that is increasingly distant from the relationship of capital and labor.
There is also a noted configuration of new monetary subjects who, without access to enough money, seek to reproduce themselves as people disconnected from the perspective of earning wages as a result of the capital-work relationship. In its place, the debit-credit ratio grows in size and is compatible with both the typically capitalist logic of work on digital platforms and the non-capitalist jobs that generate income in the subsistence economy.
Faced with the cost of living defined by the urban order, it is a survival strategy to operate based on different kinds of credit. Due to the downgrading and precariousness of employment in general, which is typical of the primary-export economic model and characterized by low productivity, labor flexibility is presented as a complementary activity, whether or not it is legal, and becomes dependent on transfers of public income and debt, among others factors.
In this sense, a scenario emerges in which there is an apparent absence of social classes and divisions that result from diffuse work relationships. By weaking identities and notions of collective belonging, the performance of traditional institutions representing the interests of industrial society, such as associations, unions, and political parties, have become less effective
For the new Digital Age, unions remain fundamental. What had been structured under national industrialization projects tend to reach their limits in the face of the digitization of the economy and society, which requires a radical repositioning of unions in order to break the impasse that imprisons workers.
