Strikes and Pickets in Brazil: Working-Class Mobilization in the “Old” and “New” Unionism, the Strikes of 1957 and 1980

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of pickets in two of the most emblematic strikes in Brazilian labor history during the twentieth century: the "strike of the 400,000," which involved several industry categories in São Paulo and neighboring cities in 1957, and the "forty-one days strike" in 1980 involving the metalworkers of the industrial belt, known as ABC Paulista, in the metropolitan region of the city of Sã o Paulo. Both strikes broke out at a time of profound reconfiguration of Brazilian society, marked by industrialization, migration, and urbanization processes. Although separated by a time gap of almost twenty-five years, both the "strike of the 400,000" and the "forty-one days strike" reveal important aspects of the performance of workers in that crucial period of Brazilian history.During a recent strike of bank workers, a judge of the labor court in the city of Cuiabá in Mato Grosso, western Brazil, had to decide on a preliminary injunction requested by a powerful multinational bank. The company demanded that trade unionists and picketing workers in general should be prohibited from approaching the bank's branches and other premises and, consequently, from organizing pickets to convince fellow workers and prevent them from getting to their workplaces. In a rare decision, the judge denied the employer's request, arguing that, preventing proximity by the strikers to the bank branches would impede the struggle for better working conditions and wages, insofar as the evident precariousness of employment positions in Brazil does not allow the majority of workers to resist the orders of their employer to ignore the strike . . . in practice, if there are no trade unionists at the company gates, there are no employees who fail to show up at work. 1Going beyond the confines of the current legal battle, the judge's reasoning evokes a longstanding political, academic, and legal debate on the action of pickets in Brazilian strikes. The connections between the workers and their leaders, the mechanisms of decision-making and trade union democracy, the linkages between organizations in the workplace and community associations, and the relationship between trade unionism, political leaders, employers, and police International Labor and Working-Class History

Lutas vigiadas

“…Campinas/São Paulo: Editora da Unicamp/Imprensa Oficial, 1999.134 A expressão remete ao trabalho de SADER, Éder. Quando novos personagens entraram em cena: experiências e lutas dos trabalhadores da Grande SãoPaulo 1970Paulo -1980 ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1995.1.embora surgissem novos e maiores estabelecimentos fabris, intensificando a relevância econômica da área urbana do município.…”