Brazilian Labor-New Tactics
Keck, Mimi
There has been no major explosion in the Brazilian labor movement this spring, but a number of small explosions and unprecedented court victories may add up to the same thing. Only a...
...Strikes have been effectively illegal since the 1964 coup, except in such cases as an employer's 50 The Supreme Milit try Tribunal hears the metalworkers' case in April...
...Yet the decision is much more important than would have been a verdict finding the defendants innocent...
...MaylJune 1902 already in place for dealing with the crisis...
...the court's action has set a precedent for other National Security Law indictments of union leaders for strike activities (with the exception of public employees...
...But litigation takes time and in the meantime, peasants are subject to harassment...
...Company Unity Breaks Down One serious hindrance to the development of an independent labor movement in Brazil has been the historical unity between domestic and multinational companies in taking a hard line against demands from workers...
...failure to pay wages for several months...
...Further, should the union leadership be arrested, a frequent occurrence, a mechanism is farmers have been sharecropping the land and are now faced with exorbitant rent hikes designed to make them abandon their holdings...
...Workers' representation in facCorporate Land Grabs Land disputes in Brazil are leading to increasingly violent confrontations, and attracting the attention of Brazilian and international human rights groups...
...At 4 a.m., as hundreds of people waited in the streets outside the military court-singing, chanting and praying-the court found Leonel guilty and sentenced him to six years in prison...
...Org inizers of an illegal strike face 1lng prison sentences and other severe penalties...
...While the metalworkers did not win the legal right to negotiate directly with individual companies, that is what in effect occurred this spring...
...Many of these were driven out of the northeast by severe droughts during the last 50 years...
...The Ford workers' commission was won during a strike against layoffs last July...
...The first is the establishment of a workers' commission at Ford in Sao Bernardo do Campo, an industrial suburb of Sao Paulo...
...The workers consider the Ford commission a prototype which they would like to see copied elsewhere, a prospect which worries some industrialists...
...It was hoped that resulting victories, such as the establishment of a workers' commission at the Ford motor plant, would then set precedents for other cases...
...Wishing to avoid a strike, some firms, most of them Brazilian, agreed to higher increases than had been offered by the employers' association...
...By a vote of nine to three, the court declared itself incompetent to hear the case, accepting the defense argument that the metalworkers' strike could not be considered a question of national security and should therefore be tried instead under the strike law...
...In some cases tories has been a longstanding demand of the new union movement...
...In addition, the legal victories in the two court cases gave the labor movement a shot in the arm at a time when recession made winning large economic concessions unlikely...
...But the skepticism proved groundless...
...The commissions provide a forum for dealing with ongoing issues in a particular plant...
...Eager for export goods, the Brazilian government is offering incentives to corporations willing to develop these resources and is also providing the necessary support services...
...In September 1981, the Brazilian Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission published documentation of some 915 land conflicts involving 261,791 families or over 1.5 million people...
...There are two major indications that this unity is now beginning to break down...
...More recently, peasants have been pushed out by the largescale conversion of agriculture to export and industrial crops...
...The men are charged under the National Security Law for having led the 1980 metalworkers' strike in the highly industrialized ABC region around Sao Paulo...
...Incentives are also being offered for the large-scale production of sugar, beef and other agricultural activities which yield lucrative export items...
...Much of the land in these areas is government owned and has been farmed by posseiros, or landholders, for two or three generations...
...Policeman Convicted Another court case which produced a landmark victory was the trial of military policeman Hercules Leonel, accused of shooting metalworkers' leader Santo Dias while the activist was on the picket line during the October 1979 metalworkers' strike...
...For the defendants in this case, the matter ends here since the statute of limitations has run out on possible civil charges under the strike law...
...Some companies, such as General Electric, still refuse to discuss issues with the union at all, preferring to rely on the more favorable labor court bureaucracy to resolve disputes...
...High unemployment figures make the fear of job loss a serious hindrance to strike organizing...
...It has value now," says one Brazilian observer...
...Further evidence that companies are no longer as committed to sticking together as they once were came during this year's wage settlements...
...Yet it should not be seen as an admission of responsibility by the military itself...
...Without official title to their land, these subsistence farmers are faced with a well-orchestrated onslaught by large corporations and plantation owners supported by the government...
...The proposal to form workers' commissions, instead of relying only on shop stewards (which also are not legally recognized), is rooted in the organizational forms which evolved in factories, particularly during strikes...
...Under Brazilian law, anyone farming a parcel productively for a certain period of time, has the right to remain on the land...
...This form of double organization has arisen in the most militant unions as a means of assuring effective shop floor representation...
...Not only did they shut down the plants, they also established the practice of direct negotiations between the company and the union-an important goal of the Brazilian movement...
...The smaller, shorter, more strategically placed sit-down strikes in fac51update update update update tories this spring were highly suc- side the union doubted that a cessful...
...The recognition of Leonel's guilt-a member of the armed forces held responsible for the murder of a civilian in a peaceful conflict-is an important and rare occurance...
...Contradictory signals from the military NACLA Report Eupdate * update . update . update establishment give the impression that the decisions in the Santo Dias and the ABC metalworker cases far from enjoy a consensus within high military circles...
...The problem is that this frontier has already been occupied for two to three generations...
...Unlike the commission established earlier at Volkswagen, which was set up under the complete control of the company, the commission at Ford resulted from negotiations between management and both the metalworkers' union and elected representatives from the factory...
...It's kind of a run for the land...
...The landholders are not without legal recourse...
...The workers did not, however, succeed in winning their demands for a forty hour week or for job security for workers involved in workrelated accidents or called up for military service...
...ABC Metalworkers Freed On April 16, Brazil's Supreme Military Tribunal handed down a landmark decision in the case of Luis Inacio da Silva (Lula) and ten other metalworkers...
...What's at stake is land now believed to be rich in such minerals as gold, iron ore and bauxite...
...Prior to the strikes, sources outstrike could be pulled off...
...The region is named for the cities of Santo Andre, Sao Bernardo and Sao Caetano...
...While there are incidents throughout the country, the struggles are becoming particularly severe in the northwest and central regions...
...In the face of repression and growing unemployment, unions changed their tactics, beginning to apply selective pressure on particular companies...
...Successful.New Tactics While most observers have taken the absence of the kinds of large-scale strikes which took place from 1978 to 1980 to mean that the Brazilian labor movement is in retreat, there are significant signs that this is not so...
...Crops and homes have been burned, priests, lawyers and labor leaders have been threatened and, in numerous cases, murdered...
...Only a few years ago, Brazilian workers were faced with a solid wall of government and entrepreneurial resistance to massive strike movements...
Vol. 16 • May 1982 • No. 3
