Vargas suicide headlines, 1954. "By passing but never enforcing an expansive labor code, the [Vargas government acted on behalf of the economic elite while keeping the workers at bay."
He did not, on this occasion, at least, defend a revolutionary new relationship between Mangabeira and Daniel Valente Dantas.
Source: DCI Comércio, Indústria & Serviços, the little São Paulo business daily that often can. Founded, if I remember right, by Aloysio Biondi.
Brazilian labor law is a bewildering hangover from the semi-fascist Estado Novo, and is about as far from a free-market, Fourth Amendment approach to labor relations as you can possibly imagine. The title of a book on the subject I read a Harvard B-School review of recently seems to describe it pretty accurately:
Drowning in Laws: Labor Law and Brazilian Political Culture. By John D. French. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004
The Vargas-era hangover under discussion here is something called the CLT, the Consolidação das Leis do Trabalho (Consolidation of Labor Laws).
French examines the words and deeds of the various parties who framed, commented on, ignored, railed against, and manipulated the labor code over the past sixty years. The result, which will appeal most directly to labor historians and historians of Brazil, is a nuanced study of manipulation and agency in a world where “workers had to reckon with the state as both a bestower of rights and benefits, however uncertain, and a force for the repression of worker rights and the denial of the effective enjoyment of those benefits.” … promulgated in 1943 by Brazil’s sometimes populist, sometimes dictatorial president Getúlio Vargas (1930–45, 1950–54) as an attempt to forestall class struggle. According to the elite’s world view, class struggle was foreign to Brazilian political culture. The elite saw their labor force as docile and content and therefore interpreted labor unrest in the 1920s and 1930s as the product of discontented, radical immigrants. With the CLT, literally a consolidation of labor laws by the Vargas administrations during the 1930s, the need for class struggle was eliminated because labor rights were granted as a sort of gift to the working class. … By passing but never enforcing an expansive labor code, the [Vargas] government acted on behalf of the economic elite while keeping the workers at bay.
Resemblance to fascist and corporatist notions of the State not coincidental.
I translate, hastily as always:
BRASÍLIA – A discussão com toda a sociedade sobre a necessidade de criação de uma nova relação entre capital e trabalho no Brasil foi objeto de longa exposição feita ontem pelo ministro-chefe da Secretaria Especial de Assuntos Estratégicos, da Presidência da República, Mangabeira Unger.
Discussing a new relationship between Labor and Capital with Brazilian society was the subject of a long presentation yesterday by … Mangabeira Unger.
Ele falou no plenário do Tribunal Superior do Trabalho (TST), acentuando que desde a era Getúlio Vargas não tem havido no país “uma grande iniciativa institucional sobre a relação capital e trabalho”. “A maioria da classe trabalhadora não está representada pelas entidades sindicais, que concentram o interesse de uma minoria.
Unger, speaking in the chambers of the federal labor tribunal, said that since the Vargas era, Brazil had seen no “grand institutional initiative on the relationship between Capital and Labor.” “Most of the working class is not represented by labor unions, which tend to concentrate the interests of a minority.”
Metade dos trabalhadores estão na economia informal e os demais se encontram oprimidos entre economias de trabalho barato e de produtividade alta, enquanto as empresas pedem desoneração”, destacou o ministro, em sua exposição.
“Half of Brazilian workers work in the informal economy, and the rest are squeezed by the economicis of cheap labor and high productivity, as employers call for a reduction in their labor obligations,” the Minister said in his speech.
Ele afirma que só será possível estabelecer um modelo justo para a classe trabalhadora com o oferecimento de contrapartidas para todos os atores na questão capital e trabalho. Lembra que há um ano o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lhe pediu que começasse a organizar um debate amplo sobre o assunto, em que os resultados devem vir de uma convergência de posições, capaz de priorizar o interesse da maioria dos trabalhadores.
He said that a fair model for the working class will only be possible if all actors in the Labor-Capital relationship are offered something of value to them. He recalled that a year ago President Lula asked him to start organizing a broad national debate on the issue, whose results would lead to a convergence of positions that would give priority to the interest of the majority of workers.
“O governo da República tem de propor à Nação o novo modelo e esta é que deve abraçar a proposta!”, assinalou Mangabeira. Uma das formas de reduzir a informalidade no trabalho é o estímulo à contratação formal dos trabalhadores através da desoneração radical da folha de salários.” Em parte, segundo ele, isso já foi feito pela reforma tributária.
“The federal government must propose to the nation a new model, and the nation must embrace this proposal!” said Mangabeira Unger. “One way of reducing informal employment is to encourage the formal hiring of workers through a radical reduction of payroll obligations.” This has already been partially accomplished by tax reform, he said.
As contribuições empresariais para o Sistema S e para o Salário Educação, diz o ministro, dificultam a situação das empresas. Mas lembrou que está em debate a contribuição dessas para a Previdência Social baseada no lucro e não através de alíquotas, como ocorre atualmente.
Employer contributions to the S System and the Education Salary program, the minister said, make things difficult for companies. But he reminded his audience that employer contributions to Social Security based on profits and not on quotas, as the current system requires, is under discussion.
We recently hired a housekeeper, “in the formality,” and according to my wife the bureaucracy and liability issues are easier than they used to be. But it is also still extremely easy to find someone to do the work “in the informality.”
A mudança da relação capital e trabalho deve passar, segundo Mangabeira, pela criação de políticas industriais e agrícolas que instrumentalizem as pequenas empresas, já que elas empregam a maioria dos trabalhadores, além de uma série de medidas institucionais para reverter a queda da participação dos salários na renda nacional.
Changing the Capital-Labor relationship, according to Mangabeira, requires creating industrial and agricultural polices that make use of small businesses, given that these employee the majority of Brazilian workers, as well as a system of institutional measures designed to revert the decline of salaries as a percentage of per capita income.
Outra idéia mencionada pelo ministro é colocar no meio da pirâmide salarial um novo estatuto legal para proteger os trabalhadores temporários e terceirizados e novo mecanismo para organizá-los e representá-los. Os sindicatos devem ter acesso à contabilidade das empresas e os acordos trabalhistas devem ser negociados para o estabelecimento de aumento real de salário e repasse da produtividade.
Another idea the minister presented is creating a new statute for the middle of the salary pyramid that would protect temporary workers, and a new mechanism for organizing and representing these workers. The unions should have access to the accounting records of employers, and collective bargaining agreements should be negotiated with an eye to achieving real salary increases and passing along productivity gains to workers.
Segundo o ministro, com esses parâmetros seria feita no País “uma grande revolução na organização das relações entre capital e trabalho”. Para isso, o debate nacional sobre o assunto deve acontecer dentro do Congresso Nacional, nas organizações sociais e universidades de todo o país, diz ele.
According to Mangabeira Unger, within these parameters, “a great revolution in the organization of labor relations” will take place. To this end, the national debate on this subject should take place in the national congress, in social movements and in universities all over Brazil, he said.
Mangabeira Unger is given to grand rhetorical gestures and the rhetoric of the revolutionary sublime.
The gritty details of the policy-making suggests a more gradualist approach to bureaucracy reduction — the opposite of “shock therapy” — is what is actually contemplated.
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