4. New Unionism: Protest, Mobilization, and Negotiating the Transition to Democracy, 1978–1988

“As multinacionais fabricam a miséria”: a media headline shown in the documentary “Greve!” (“Strike!”) about the 1979 metalworkers’ strike in Greater São Paulo (directed by João Batista de Andrade, 1979).

As shown in the documentary “Greve!”.

Iram J. Rodrigues, “A trajetória do novo sindicalismo,” in O novo sindicalismo: Vinte anos depois, ed. Iram J. Rodrigues (São Paulo: Vozes, 1999), 76–7; Leigh A. Payne, “Working Class Strategies in the Transition to Democracy in Brazil,” Comparative Politics 23(2) (1991): 229.

Although the metalworkers’ strikes are the best-known aspect of the late 1970s protests, significant strikes also occurred outside the urban centres of Brazil’s southeast. Sugarcane workers went on strike in 1979 in the northeastern state of Pernambuco but did not develop the same political agenda as the metalworkers’ unions. According to Pereira, their position reflected the historical “reality that democratic rights had been extended differentially in Brazil and that some unions had greater rights to consultation than others”, which facilitated the politicization of union action in the southeast, Anthony W. Pereira, The End of the Peasantry: The Rural Labor Movement in Northeast Brazil, 1961–1988 (Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), 70. See also Robert J. Alexander, A History of Organized Labor in Brazil (Westport, CN: Praeger, 2003), 175–7.

Maria H. Tavares de Almeida, Crise econômica e interesses organizados: O sindicalismo dos anos 80 (São Paulo: EDUSP, 1996), 37–9; Thomas E. Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 205.

The fact that the proposal combined wage increases and labour reform—including full freedom of organization, bilateral wage bargaining between unions and employers, and the right to strike—led the conservative Veja magazine to identify the issue that would dominate the union agenda for the next decades: “The demand for a wage increase … began to demonstrate the intimate link with the problem of workers’ and union rights of workers”, Veja, “A questão operária,” 14 September 1977, 20.

Folha de São Paulo, “Metalúrgicos tentarão repor salários através de acordo,” 3 September 1977; O Estado de São Paulo, “São Bernardo não desiste dos 34.1%,” 29 November 1977.

“Entrevista Gilson Menezes, parte I”, Memórias operárias, accessed July 11, 2016, http://​memoriasoperaria​s.​blogspot.​nl/​2015/​12/​entrevista-gilson-menezes-parte-i.​html

The strike movement not only strengthened the position of existing unions but also motivated the formation of new unions. The number of new unions increased even more rapidly after the approval of the 1988 Constitution, which allowed for the establishment of public sector trade unions, see Adalberto Moreira Cardoso, Sindicatos, trabalhadores e a coqueluche neoliberal: A era Vargas acabou? (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Gétulio Vargas, 1999), 48–50.

Diario do Grande ABC, “Operários da Scania entram em greve,” 13 May 1978.

“Entrevista Gilson Menezes”. The company and police reaction to the strike give an indication of how the workers had organized the action in secret. A Delegacia de Ordem Social (DOS) document shows that the company had searched the workers’ lockers for evidence of advance organization and found a handwritten note in a coat pocket with the text (in English) “Good nigth goes stoped Monday, day 15 [sic],” which the company denounced to the police. Several workers were detained but they denied any connection with the strike, claiming they did not speak English, after which the case was closed. Delegacia de Ordem Social, Dossiês Movimentos Grevistas/Auto, Vítima: Saab-Scania do Brasil S/A, OS 0378, 1978.

“Entrevista Gilson Menezes”.

A 1983 PT evaluation of the strike movement viewed the motive for the strikes between 1978 and 1980 as primarily economic with implicit political dimensions, PT, “Movimento sindical,” Boletim Nacional , November 20, 1983, 8–10. See also, Margaret E. Keck, Workers’ Party and Democratization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 260; Leôncio Martins Rodrigues, “As tendências políticas na formação das centrais sindicais,” in O sindicalismo brasileiro nos anos 80, ed. Armando Boito Jr. (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1991), 29, fn 31.

According to Osvaldo Bargas, secretary-general of the Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos de São Bernardo do Campo and Diadema in the early 1980s, Ford workers had more freedom to organize while Scania and Volkswagen isolated the union. Interview transcript with Osvaldo Bargas, Transnationals Information Exchange archive, box 38, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (1982), 3–4.

Mario dos Santos Barbosa, “Sindicalismo em tempos de crise: A experiência na Volkswagen do Brasil” (MA diss., Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2002), 85–7.

In addition, Sluyter-Beltrão attributes the union leadership’s ability to convince the workers to end the strike to Lula’s “charismatic authority” and the growing centralization of power in the metalworkers’ union, indicating a shift away from the grassroots, see Jeffrey Sluyter-Beltrão, Rise and Decline of Brazil’s New Unionism: The Politics of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010), 94–5.

Reconstrução de Lutas Operárias, “Comissões de Fábrica em São Paulo: Dados sobre comissões de fábrica no estado de São Paulo, sua origem, lutas, composição, estatutos e outros itens,” Caderno 6 (São Paulo: Reconstrução, 1985), 3.

On the intersection between the strike movement and women’s movements in the late 1970s, see Sonia E. Alvarez, Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women’s Movements in Transition Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 105–7. On the role of the Catholic Church, see Scott Mainwaring, The Catholic Church and Politics in Brazil, 1916–1985 (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1986); Kenneth P. Serbin, “The Catholic Church, Religious Pluralism, and Democracy in Brazil,” in Democratic Brazil: Actors, Institutions, and Processes, ed. Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press), 144–61.

Santana, “Ditadura militar,” 293–4.

Thomas C. Bruneau, The Church in Brazil: The Politics of Religion (Austin TX: University of Texas at Austin, 1982), 101; Daniel Zirker, “The Brazilian Church-State Crisis of 1980: Effective Nonviolent Action in a Military Dictatorship”, in Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Perspective, ed. by Stephen Zunes, Lester Kurtz, and Sarah B. Asher (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 259–78.

One such organization is the Centro Pastoral Vergueiro in central São Paulo, established in 1973 and home to a unique archive on social movement struggles in the 1970s and 1980s.

Rodrigues, “As tendências políticas”, 17.

Rodrigues, “As tendências políticas”, 28.

The communist parties supported the moderate sectors within the labour movement for reasons related to the history of Brazilian communism. Throughout its existence, the PCB had supported a class alliance with the progressive elements of the national bourgeoisie, based on an assumed political convergence with working-class interests against international capital’s influence in Brazil. During the dictatorship, the party saw unions as a way to “reactivate” the workers’ movement, encouraging party members to become union activists. The party argued that Brazil first required liberal democracy and national capitalist development before a revolution could be contemplated. This position continued during the military regime, when the PCB focused on creating a broad-based anti-authoritarian movement within the opposition party MDB. During the transition, the PCB associated itself with the party it expected to be in power after the return to democracy, the MDB and later the PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democrático do Brasil, Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), even using the MDB as an electoral vehicle for its candidates before the PCB was legalized in 1985. Similarly, union leaders associated with the PCB focused on strengthening the party’s position within the official union structure as their main strategy to promote the interests of the working class, generally rejecting new unionism’s focus on political autonomy. See Marco A. Santana, “Política e história em disputa: O ‘novo sindicalismo’ e a idéia da ruptura com o passado,” in O novo sindicalismo: Vinte anos depois, ed. Iram J. Rodrigues, (São Paulo: Vozes, 1999), 133–61; Santana, “Ditadura militar,” 284–7.

Vito Giannotti, História das lutas dos trabalhadores no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 2007), 237–9. Giannotti—himself a former metalworker and author of various histories of the Brazilian labour movement—discusses how in 1980 a PCB representative tried to stop a metalworkers’ strike, arguing that the political moment was not right.

The “socialist left” within the labour movement aligned with groups such as the Union Oppositions, Alternativa Sindical Socialista (Socialist Union Alternative) and Corrente Sindical Classista (Classist Union Current). The Union Oppositions sometimes accused the Authentics that their strategies for union reform were not radical enough, undermining grassroots mobilizing and allowing corporatism to continue to exist, see Leôncio Martins Rodrigues, CUT: Os militantes e a ideologia (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1990), 20; Ricardo Antunes, O continente do labor (São Paulo: Boitempo, 2011), 102–3. In the eyes of most radical groupings that emerged in the wake of the strike movement, the union movement did not merely function politically to improve of the position of workers but as a revolutionary instrument in the struggle for socialism, Iram J. Rodrigues, Sindicalismo e política: A trajetória da CUT (São Paulo: Edições Sociais, 1997), 201.

The 1979 documentary “Braços cruzados, máquinas paradas” (“Arms Crossed, Machines Stopped”, by Sergio Toledo Segall) depicts the strike movement in Greater São Paulo in 1978 and 1979, including grassroots mobilization outside the factory gates and union elections in which the oposições sindicais challenged the official leadership.

The military regime introduced a new strike law in 1964 which “virtually eliminated the possibility of conducting a legal strike”. The law banned strikes in the public sector, state-owned companies, and essential services while the law stipulated organizational requirements which made a legal decision to go on strike all but impossible. Sanctions for breaking the law were also severe, including interventions in union affairs and other forms of repression, see Wendy Hunter, Eroding Military Influence in Brazil: Politicians against Soldiers (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 76.

Interview transcript with Waldemar Rossi, Oposição Metalúrgica São Paulo, Transnationals Information Exchange archive, box 38, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam [c. 1982], 2–3; ‘Entrevista Waldemar Rossi—Oposição Metalúrgica de São Paulo’, Memorias Operárias, accessed July 11, 2016, http://​memoriasoperaria​s.​blogspot.​nl/​2014/​05/​entrevista-waldemar-rossi.​html. Like Rossi, Osvaldo Bargas also emphasized the importance of informing workers and direct conversations, calling news bulletins an instrument “to mobilize, organize, and to create awareness”, interview transcript Osvaldo Bargas, 5.

The 2004 documentary “Peões” (“Metalworkers”, by Eduardo Coutinho) features interviews with participants in the strike movement, many of whom, like Lula, had migrated to São Paulo from the Brazilian northeast.

Private sector unions, particularly in the industrial sector in São Paulo, dominated in this group, as represented by the metalworkers’ unions’ dominant position. For the Greater São Paulo context, see also John Humphrey, “Auto Workers and the Working Class in Brazil,” Latin American Perspectives 6(4) (1979), 71–89; Francisco Barbosa de Macedo, “Social Networks and the Urban Space: Worker Mobilization in the First Years of ‘New Unionism’ in Brazil,” International Review of Social History 60 (2015), 37–71; Mark Anner, Solidarity Transformed: Labor Responses to Globalization and Crisis in Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 39–44.

Rodrigues, “As tendências políticas”, 27. For further analysis of the emergence of the autênticos in Greater São Paulo in the 1970s, see Rodrigues, Sindicalismo e política, 64–80.

See interview transcript Rossi, 10.

Barbosa de Macedo, “Social Networks and Urban Space,” 47.

Idem, 56.

Interview transcript, Waldemar Rossi, 10.

PT, “Movimento sindical”, 16.

See Comissão Nacional Pró-CUT, “Tudo sobre a I CONCLAT: À caminho da Central Única” (São Paulo: Centro de Informação, Documentação e Análise Sindical, 1981), 9–10.

Interview transcript Osvaldo Bargas, 9.

Cited in Teones França, Novo sindicalismo no Brasil: Histórico de uma desconstrução (São Paulo: Cortez, 2014), loc. 1082. In 2001, an article in the magazine Isto É Gente described him as a “relentless negotiator”, Isto É Gente, “O negociador implacável,” Dec. 17, 2001. Marinho later became labour minister under Lula’s first government, overseeing minimum wage negotiations, and then mayor of São Bernardo do Campo.

Noronha cited in Ricardo Antunes, “Recent Strikes in Brazil: The Main Tendencies of the Strike Movement of the 1980s,” Latin American Perspectives 21(1) (1994), 26; Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida, “O sindicalismo brasileiro entre a conservação e a mudança,” in Sociedade política no Brasil pós-64, ed. by Bernardo Sorj and Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1983), 296; Alves, State and Opposition, 207.

Márcia de Paula Leite, “Reinvindicações sociais dos metalúrgicos,” Caderno no. 3 (São Paulo: CEDEC, 1983), 31–2.

Dos Santos Barbosa, “Sindicalismo em tempos,” 62–4; Alves, State and Opposition, 209. On the Ford factory commission in the years after 1981, see María Helena Moreira Alves and Roque Aperecido Silva, “Nas fábricas, a volta dos velhos tempos,” Lua Nova 3 (1987), 48–50.

Interview transcript, Mercedes-Benz employee, São Bernardo do Campo, Transnationals Information Exchange archive, box 38, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam [c. 1982], 6.

According to data collected by the Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos do ABC, cited in dos Santos Barbosa, “Sindicalismo em tempos,” 67–8. There is little information available about workplace representation in other parts of Brazil, indicating that factory commissions were limited to companies with strong union representation.

Noronha cited in Antunes, “Recent Strikes in Brazil,” 26; Almeida, “Sindicalismo brasileiro,” 296.

Diario do Grande ABC, “Metalúrgicos vão parar hoje,” Diario do Grande ABC, July 7, 1983; Folha de São Paulo, “Decretada intervenção nos petroleiros de Campinas,” Folha de São Paulo, July 7, 1983.

For the CUT’s own perspective on the debates surrounding its foundation, see CUT, Nasce a CUT. For further analysis of the debates preceding the CUT’s foundation, see Sluyter-Beltrão, Rise and Decline, 141–52.

Rodrigues, CUT: Os militantes, 3; Diario do Grande ABC, “CUT: O motivo da divisão,” Diario do Grande ABC, August 12, 1983.

CUT Diretoria Nacional, correspondence about the Diretoria Nacional meeting on September 10–11, 1983, Archive Sindicato dos Bancários, accessed August 19, 2016, http://​www.​adb.​inf.​br/​arc02/​?​p=​digitallibrary/​digitalcontent&​id=​57#.​V7lDCJN94fE

PT, “Movimento sindical,” 8–10.

CUT, “Uma vitória dos trabalhadores,” Jornal da CUT 2(1) (1984), 5. As Rodrigues points out, the Congress’s resolutions on the general strike were “confused and contradictory”, more than likely reflecting the intensity of the debates, see Rodrigues, CUT: Os militantes, 5.

PT, “Libertar os sindicatos,” 4–5.

PT, “Movimento sindical,” 17–8.

Marieke Riethof, “Changing Strategies of the Brazilian Labor Movement: From Opposition to Participation,” Latin American Perspectives, 31(6) (2004), 36. These changing perspectives on class can be found in the following PT documents: PT, “Plano de ação política e organizativa do Partido dos Trabalhadores para o período 1986/87/88,” in Resoluções de Encontros e Congressos, 1979–1998, ed. Fundação Perseu Abramo (São Paulo: Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo, 1998), 246–94; PT, “7° Encontro Nacional: O socialismo petista,” in Resoluções de Encontros e Congressos, 1979–1998, ed. Fundação Perseu Abramo (São Paulo: Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo, 1998), 429–35.

Alves, “Interclass Alliances,” 291–5.

Salvador Sandoval, Os trabalhadores param: Greves e mudança social no Brasil: 1945–1990 (São Paulo: Editora Ática, 1994), 184–7; Almeida, Crise econômica, 33.

IBASE, “Avaliação das políticas sociais do governo federal,” Rio de Janeiro: IBASE, October 1985, 16.

CUT, “A crise atual e o movimento sindical europeu,” undated, Transnationals Information Exchange archive, box 33, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

PT, “PT avalia a greve: Aprendemos com nossos erros,” Boletim Nacional 31 (1987), 8. Tirso Marçal (PT trade union secretary) similarly criticized the CUT of acting like a “fluid articulation of unions” rather than a well-coordinated instrument for worker mobilization, Tirso Marçal cited in PT, “As novas tarefas da CUT,” Boletim Nacional 36 (1988), 6.

Meneguelli quoted in PT, “O teste da unicidade,” Boletim Nacional 38 (1988), 12.

Folha de São Paulo, “CUT e CONCLAT discutem campanha pró-Constituinte,” Folha de São Paulo, Feb. 27, 1985; Globo, “CUT define tarefas para seus filiados,” Globo, June 17, 1988.

Jornal do Brasil, “CUT arma defesa dos itens pró-trabalhador,” Jornal do Brasil, July 23, 1988; Jornal do Brasil, “Contag, CUT e CGT levam milhares,” Jornal do Brasil, June 12, 1988; Almeida, Crise econômica, 184–6.