unionism de result

Study investigates causes and consequences of the growth of conservative centrals between 2003 and 2016

unionism de result

Study investigates causes and consequences of the growth of conservative centrals between 2003 and 2016

The precariousness of work and the changes in the political and economic contexts that have occurred since the redemocratization of Brazil, with the enactment of the Federal Constitution of 1988, have altered the dynamics of Brazilian unionism and its ability to represent workers' interests. A dissertation defended at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp investigates this scenario to understand the growth of unions characterized as conservative during the years 2003 to 2016 – a period marked by governments of the Workers' Party (PT) –, pointing out the causes and potential impacts of this process.

Trade unions, horizontal organizations that bring together unions from different categories, articulate broad political and social projects and work to defend workers' rights. Using a qualitative and quantitative approach, the research used different sources of information, including the union representation index from 2008 to 2016, published by the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE), to assess the representativeness of these organizations. It found that the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), an entity considered progressive in the literature, remained in first place in the ranking until 2015, followed by Força Sindical, a conservative union, in second.

In 2016, for the first time, Força Sindical fell to fourth place, giving way to the General Union of Workers (UGT), in second, and the Central dos Trabalhadores e Trabalhadoras do Brasil (CTB), in third. In fifth and sixth place were the Central dos Sindicatos Brasileiros (CSB) and the Nova Central Sindical de Trabalhadores (NCST).

What is the reason for this repositioning and the growth of the conservative wing, whose representation index went from 29,91% in 2008 to 36,97% in 2016, while the progressive wing remained relatively stable, oscillating from 40,93% to 40,48%? This is the question that the dissertation sought to answer.

The author of the study, Marcos Aurélio Minari, explains that the conservative unions (Força Sindical, UGT, NCST, CSB and Central Geral dos Trabalhadores do Brasil) “are less willing to promote mobilizations and strike action, to carry out grassroots political work. At the same time, they are more willing to make agreements with employers’ unions and companies”. Thus, they present a more pragmatic profile, focused on obtaining isolated and specific gains for their base to the detriment of politicization and obtaining benefits for workers in general.

This model contrasts with the strategies adopted by the unions considered progressive (CUT and CTB), with a more combative and demanding profile, and by the entities considered radical (Conlutas and Intersindical – a working class organization and inter-union union center), which are more to the left and did not support the PT governments in the period analyzed. The study's supervisor and IFCH professor, Andréia Galvão, highlights the fact that the research looks precisely at conservative organizations, commonly overlooked in academic studies.

legal support

Minari identifies that this process began with or was strengthened by the rise of the PT to the Presidency of the Republic in 2003, causing changes in the relationship between the government and trade unions. The approval, in 2008, of the Law of Recognition of Trade Union Centers (Law No. 11.548/2008) established a legislative framework of great impact, as it provided legal support for these entities and established criteria capable of determining which trade union centers are representative, considering the number of workers affiliated with the unions that make up each one.

The institutionalization of representation intensified the dispute between unions seeking membership of grassroots unions and led to the emergence of new entities, since only those capable of meeting the MTE requirements would be entitled to union tax resources (optional as of 2017) and access to spaces for dialogue with the government in public policy councils, previously occupied by the unions with the greatest national presence. “Before that, there was no administrative procedure to calculate this representation. We knew which were the most representative because they were projected in the public debate,” the researcher emphasizes.

In the economic sphere, the precariousness of work, a phenomenon that intensified in the 1990s, also played an important role, leading to a greater creation of jobs in sectors with weaker employment relationships, such as services, commerce and construction – whose members have been increasingly hired as freelancers, as legal entities (in a process called “pejotização”) or even as outsourced workers. The conservative unions managed to position themselves as representatives of these segments, bringing together more unions among these categories – such as the UGT, which focused on sales workers, and the CSB, which focused on the areas of transportation, storage and communication.

To meet the requirements for representation, the unions, especially the conservative ones, used different strategies, such as the territorial dismemberment of unions that represented more than one municipality or the division of categories into more restricted subgroups. In addition to seeking unions that were not previously affiliated to any union or directly competing for unions that were already affiliated, through elections.

Threatened representation

According to researchers, the growing relevance of conservative trade unions in the country does not necessarily translate into a greater capacity to represent workers' interests, and this is due to the moderate and conciliatory profile that prevails in their way of acting. Something similar happened when it came to positioning regarding outsourcing: while progressive and radical unions opposed this process or defended more restrictive regulation, conservative unions were willing to negotiate the possibility of extending outsourcing to all types of activity under the pretext of guaranteeing certain rights.

According to Galvão, this opens the door to further deterioration of work: “If we think of a union model that increasingly allows for the reduction of rights, what are the limits? Who is responsible for thinking of alternatives other than the unions that represent workers?” Furthermore, the increase in job insecurity affects the basis of union representation, as employees of the same company start to belong to different professional categories, fragmenting into different unions. Finally, the rejection of unions by some segments, such as app drivers, and the high rate of informality in the Brazilian labor market are factors that contribute to weakening the representative capacity of the union structure.