alternative forms ofworking-class organization and the mobilization of informal-sectorworkers in...

8/8/2019 Alternative Forms ofWorking-Class Organization and the Mobilization of Informal-SectorWorkers in Brazil in the Era

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Alternative Forms of Working-Class Organization andthe Mobilization of Informal-Sector Workers in Brazil

in the Era of Neoliberalism

Salvador A.M. SandovalPontifcia Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo; Universidade Estadual de Campinas

Abstract

This article examines recent changes in working-class collective actions. First it explains

which were the main causes for the decline of traditional labor union militancy

resulting from effects of economic stabilization, neoliberalization, and globalization on

those key segments of labor movement that accounted for the backbone of unionmilitancy as in the case of the automotive workers, bank workers, steelworkers, and

civil servants of the Brazilian economy during the decade of the 1990s. Secondly, the

article analyzes the emergence of alternative forms of worker contention among the

urban informal sector and the rural workers through the landless workers movement,

which also have been affected by the processes of neoliberalization and globalization,

but unlike the workers in the formal sector, these continue to contend for worker

entitlements and introduce new forms of worker organization different from the

conventional union organizations upon which is based the Brazilian labor movement.

How has neoliberalism affected how workers protest, and what new forms of

working-class contestation have emerged as a consequence of neo-liberal policies?

These questions, relevant throughout Latin America, are even more significant in

the case of the Brazilian labor movement, which was one of the strongest in the

region and had reached the apex of its capacity to mobilize workers at the

beginning of the 1990s. Unlike its counterparts in other Latin-American countries,

moreover, the Brazilian labor movement in the 1980s represented a clear rupture

with traditional clientelistic labor politics. Together with the progressive clergy of

the Catholic Church and leftist intellectuals, it created a new labor party that

would become a point of reference in Latin-American politics. Before the

1990s, the Brazilian labor movement represented a new force in national politics

through its incomparable capacity to mobilize workers in the workplace and to

press for economic and political reforms.

As early as 1978, backed by progressive Catholic clergy, left-wing labor

leaders embarked on the task of systematically challenging military rule

through strikes that gathered momentum each year among the working-class

and other broad sectors of civil society. By 1984, this new antipopulist labormovement, called the New Unionism, was at the core of massive demon-

strations throughout Brazil demanding an end to the military dictatorship and

direct presidential elections.


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nationwide general strikes.1 At the same time, the New Unionism, organized

under the banner of the National Workers Confederation (Central Unica dos

Trabalhadores [CUT]) was an instrumental player in the formation of the

Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores [PT]), a new progressive andnonpopulist political party. Today, the CUT still has an impressive presence in

union and national politics as the strongest labor confederation, affiliating over

fifty percent of Brazils labor unions, including the largest and economically

most significant ones.

Since 1994, with monetary stabilization and the governments introduction

of neoliberal policies, there has been a significant decline in union-led strikes.

The decline in union mobilization resulted not only from the effects of econ-

omic recession as a consequence of neoliberal reforms and the opening of

the economy to foreign competition, as most authors have pointed out; but, just as importantly, from the erosion of the rank-and-file support structurewithin the CUT, as well as that organizations inability to adapt to the socio-

economic changes resulting from monetary stabilization, neoliberalism, and

globalization.

In the first part of this article I examine how the conditions for mobili-

zation were undermined for key segments of unionized workersmetal

workers, bank workers, and civil servantsthat were the mainstay of militancy

within the labor movement. The weakening of these segments mobilization

capacity, I argue, was a consequence of monetary stabilization under thePlano Real and the opening to foreign investment that accompanied it.

Stabilization permitted a new expansion of the economy and these unionized

segments confronted new challenges as a result of the increased foreign invest-

ment that entered Brazil with the end of hyperinflation and subsequent

economic restructuring.

Even though labor unions failed to mobilize workers to confront deterior-

ating employment and working conditions under neoliberalism, not all workers

were passive when confronted with unemployment and layoffs. Some managed

to organize those working in the informal sector to stage confrontations withauthorities, storeowners, and other workers. This alternative arena of workermobilization has marked the urban political landscape in recent years. The

major political parties that controlled city governments invariably pressured

the national government for solutions to the growing unemployment as a

consequence.

The second part of this article examines three cases of alternative working-

class contestation that have arisen due to the impact of the neoliberalization of

the Brazilian economy and institutionalized resources for severance payments.

The first case is that of the Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dosTrabalhadores Sem Terra [MST]), which underwent significant growth in the

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traditional street vendors that sell small, homemade trinkets and foods. This new

type of vendor was one byproduct of neoliberalism, as industrial workers were

dismissed and invested their severance benefits in manufactured goods that

would attract middle-class consumers. Attempts by city authorities to repressthese vendors resulted in widespread conflict and the emergence of union-like

organizations to defend the right to work the streets. Finally, I analyze a

similar case of the independent passenger-van owners, workers that also lost

their jobs in this period, and, like the new street vendors, invested their sever-

ance payments, but in this case purchasing passenger vans and using them to

compete against urban bus companies. The conflicts that ensued due to repres-

sion by municipal authorities represented yet another form of alternative

working-class contention resulting from neoliberalism.

Since then, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) lead by Luis Inacio Lula daSilva and the New Unionism have been among the major forces for institutionalreforms, the broadening of democratic rule, and the improvement of social

welfare. The new unionism leadership forged the CUT, the first national organ-

ization bringing together labor unions of all branches of the economy. Although

the CUT has faced factionalism over the last two decades due to internal ideo-

logical cleavages and the formation of Forca Sindical,2 a dissident confederation,

the CUT today remains clearly identified as the progressive and militant labor

confederation.

For this reason, the rise of alternative forms of labor contestation is, to alarge extent, a consequence of the political and strategic contradictions facing

the labor movement and the CUT, as a result of monetary stabilization and

neoliberalism. I argue that monetary stabilization rather than neoliberalism or

globalization undermined the labor movement and the CUTs capacity to

mobilize rank-and-file workers against the negative effects of neoliberalism

and globalization.

A second important function of the informal sector is that of providing a

large range of alternative forms of income-earning opportunities for working-

class families to complement low formal-sector wages through family-basedventures in producing, packaging, and selling merchandise and servicesdirectly to consumers. This allows for working-class family members of

various ages to engage in part-time work activities, providing other sources

of income for the family unit, as well as an alternative workplace as a precau-

tion against the possibility of job loss in the formal sector during periods of

economic uncertainty.

The article broadens the discussion of working-class mobilization beyond

union-led actions by illustrating the emerging mobilization of unemployed

workers as they defended work and livelihood in the informal sector orthrough actions seeking agrarian reform. We argue that the decline of labor

The Era of Neoliberalism 65


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The Demobilization of the Brazilian Labor Movement in the 1990s

The Brazilian labor relations system was established by Getulio Vargas, during the

Estado Novo dictatorship (19371945), under the auspices of the Compendium ofLabor Laws (Consolidacao das Leis do Trabalho (CLT)). The CLT created a cor-

poratist structure of conflict resolution between the bourgeoisie and the working

class with the explicit aim of providing the state with the power to maintain

control over the labor movement. Thus, prior to the end of military rule in 1985,

the Brazilian state exercised considerable control over labor relations and the

internal affairs of labor unions. Because of state intervention into union affairs,

labor leaders were largely dependent on political parties and politicians to

secure their positions in the labor movement and to persuade the rank-and-file

of their political efficacy. Union affairs were generally characterized by populist,clientelistic relations and working-class contestation was often limited to political

arrangements between union leaders and political authorities.

Military governments after the 1964 coup marginalized the participation of

union leaders in politics, reduced the opportunities of labor leader cooptation,

and dealt with the labor movement through authoritarian methods instead of

pursuing populist strategies of control and cooptation characteristic of civilian

governments in previous decades. During the two decades of military rule, a

new breed of union leaders emerged in some major unions with nonpartisan

labor experiences, as rank-and-file workers and Catholic community groupsorganized away from the workplace surveillance of pro-government union

cronies and management. These years of political activism in working-class com-

munities resulted in the formation of a new generation of labor leaders that

during the 1970s gradually took back the unions from government intervention

and laid the groundwork for the emergence a more combative union movement

that challenged the military regime.

In late 1970s, under the leadership of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, president of

the metalworkers union of Sao Bernardo do Campo in Sao Paulo, strikes broke

out in the industrial belt of metropolitan Sao Paulo. Workplace demands werequickly transformed into protests against military rule, catapulting these pro-

gressive unions into the forefront of the national movement to end the twenty-

year dictatorship, and forcing mainstream opposition politicians to include a

new popular actor in political negotiations for the transition to democratic rule.

Since then, Lula and the New Unionism have been among the major forces

for institutional reforms, the broadening of democratic rule, and the improve-

ment of social welfare. The new unionism leadership created the CUT, the

first national organization bringing together labor unions of all branches of

the economy. Although the CUT has faced factionalism over the last twodecades due to internal ideological cleavages and the formation of Forca

Sindical a dissident conservative confederation the CUTremains clearly ident

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the labor movement and the CUT faced as a result of monetary stabilization and

the opening to foreign capital during the 1990s. Monetary stabilization under-

mined the capacity of the CUT and the labor movement generally to mobil-

ize rank-and-file workers against the negative effects of neoliberalism andglobalization.

By the end of the 1980s, the Brazilian labor movement had attained a record

level of mobilization capacity as seen in the number of strikes in that period as

well as the four general strikes that the CUT led. Strike strength was ten times

greater than at the beginning of the decade when the New Unionism first

emerged. On the institutional front, the CUT had consolidated the movement

under a national organization that united eighty-nine percent of government

employees unions, fifty-one percent of unions in domestically-owned firms,

and fifty-six percent of unions in transnational corporations.4

Thus by the early 1990s, labors presence in the political arena was formid-able as was its corresponding political party, the Workers Party (PT). As

Graph 1 illustrates, strike activity in 1990 reflected the tendencies of the pre-

vious decade, when the labor movement reached a high level of organizational

maturity. In 1990, organized labor led 1952 strikes, with an average of 4654

strikers per event.5 During the decade that followed, however, labors trajectory

was in fact the inverse of the 1980s. In focusing on strike performance as a quan-

titative measure of labors capacity to mobilize workers, the 1990s can be

divided into three phases representing different political and economic conjunc-tures and patterns of labor mobilization.

As illustrated in Graph 1, Phase I encompasses the years 1990 to 1993,

when labor was struggling against the effects of hyperinflation. Considering

that these years were marked by severe economic instability, as the country

rapidly slipped into a hyperinflation spiral, labors response was direct. Union



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mobilization against the erosion of wages due to the twenty-five to thirty percent

monthly inflation rate produced strikes with characteristic dimensions. There

was a significant decrease in the number of strike actions from 1952 in 1990

to 732 in 1993, with a slight increase between 1993 and 1994. However, althoughstrikes decreased significantly, the average number of strikers per event

increased to record heights. By 1993, the average number of strikers was

7,095 workers per strike. As hyperinflation drained the lifeblood from the

people, workers joined strikes in increasing numbers to protest and defend

their interests. Even though one can see in this phase a fluctuation in the

average number of strikers, it is important to note that in spite of this fluctuation,

strikes showed increases in participants.6

The second phase, between 1994 and 1996, represents the years immedi-

ately following the monetary stabilization program. The Plano Real of July1994 was an unorthodox economic program to halt spiraling inflation.Economic stabilization was a fundamental factor in undermining labors mobil-

ization capacity in this phase. Strike activity, in terms of number of strikes,

increased slightly over the previous period, but the average number of strikers

declined at a rapid rate, reaching its lowest level since the late 1970s. Strike

actions were focused mainly in specific firms, while large sector-wide mobiliz-

ations ceased. The second phase can best be understood in relation to

Phase 1 and Phase 3. Overall, Phase 2 reflected the difficulties that the

CUT-led labor movement had in dealing with socioeconomic changes createdby economic stabilization.

The data for Phase 3 clearly depicts strike activity in a period of economic

recession due to the monetary policies of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso

administration. Strike levels declined and the average number of strikers had

a small increase over the period between 1994 and 1996. The decline occurred,

in part, because of the effects of the recession on workers disposition to chal-

lenge employers in a period of growing unemployment; but the decline in

labor union mobilization also resulted from the erosion of the CUTs

rank-and-file bases and the organizations inability to respond to the conse-quences of stabilization, neoliberalism, and the opening of the Brazilianeconomy to the forces of globalization.

The Changing Profile of Strike Demands

Strikers in the first phase made proactive demands, focusing overwhelmingly on

wage increases to combat the galloping inflation that marked those years. After

monetary stabilization in 1994, strike demands underwent very important

changes, clearly differentiating the subsequent Phases 2 and 3. As Graph 2shows, between 1994 and 1997 (Phase 2) proactive strike demands began a

68 ILWCH, 72, Fall 2007


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the effects of low inflation, turned against workers to lower costs, maintain

higher profit margins, and prepare themselves for the impact of globalization.

This is best exemplified by strikers specific demands.7 In Phase 2, wage

demands decrease almost forty percent, while demands for employers compli-

ance with contracts rose from eighteen to forty-four percent. During this time,demands over job security remained at ten percent.

In Phase 3 the profile of strike demands changed the most. Beginning with

1997, as strike actions and worker participation plummeted, strike demands

reflected the new socioeconomic conditions of recessive neoliberal policies.From 1997 on, defensive demands overwhelmingly dominated, while proactive

demands become progressively less important.

A closer look at specific strike demands, depicted in Graph 3, shows that

higher wage demands played a less important role, falling to twenty-five

percent in 1998 and twenty-eight percent in 1999. On the other hand, reactivedemands like those for contract compliance and job security became

predominant during strikes. Contract compliance demands accounted, on

average, for fifty percent of the demands in all strikes at this time. Even more

interesting is the fact that job security demands doubled from fifteen percent

in 1997 to almost thirty percent in 1999. In other words, of all the strikes

conducted in the period, thirty percent of them made demands about job

security and fifty percent also made demands related to compliance with

contracts or legal provisions. The shift from proactive demands to defensive

ones further demonstrates the effects that the new economic scene had on theworking class.

A d h fil f ik d d h d f b i i

2. Percentage of proactive and defensive strike demands Brazil, 19941999.



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While strike scholarship has clearly established the now commonplace fact

that recession tends to reduce the predisposition of workers to strike, it is not

entirely clear that it explains the pronounced decline of labor militancy in theBrazilian case. During the decade of the 1980s, under conditions of spiraling

inflation and periodic recession, unions were far less restrained and were

more predisposed to mobilize against employers and the government. Why

then in the 1990s, with a highly organized union movement under the CUT,

was labor less efficacious in its capacity to mobilize against the effects of neoli-

beralism and globalization? A partial explanation is offered by the recession,

but to fully understand labors demobilization, we must focus on how economic

stability and restructuring weakened the CUTs union bases and its capacity to

respond to new economic challenges.Although the Plano Real halted hyperinflation, the Brazilian economy was

already showing signs of major structural changes from the beginning of the

decade, changes which would eventually undermine the social basis of the

New Unionism. Certainly, the impact of an economy in recession, as in

the years 19971999, would partially account for the radical decline in strikeactivity. But this decline began early in the 1990s, following a successful

decade of labor militancy and organizing. This article argues that economic

changes in Brazil that began with the Plano Real in 1994 contributed signifi-

cantly to the weakening of the CUT rank-and-file base and provoked seriousdilemmas for union leaders regarding how to formulate systematic and cogent

3. Wage, contract compliance, and job security strike demands (percentages), Brazil,19941999.

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and steelworkers; bank workers; and government employees like civil servants,

schoolteachers and healthcare workers. Examining the evolution of employ-

ment between 1989 and 1999, one finds that of these sectors that had been

the mainstay of CUT militancy, only government workers did not suffer signifi-cant losses in employment in the 1990s. As the data in Graph 4 indicates, auto-

motive workers and other metalworkers, as well as bank workers, faced

significant declines in job opportunities as compared to the overall rates in

industrial employment and employment in the service sector.

Crisis in the Metal Workers Unions of Metropolitan Areas

Automotive workers in the ABC region of metropolitan Sao Paulo were the

cradle of the New Unionism in the late 1970s and a cornerstone of the CUT.

Throughout the 1980s, metalworkers demonstrated determination and comba-

tiveness by participating in the major mobilizations of the decade and providing

the CUT with the core leadership that consolidated the national labor move-

ment. Yet by 1990, employment opportunities in the sector declined. In

Phase 1, employment declined less severely from an index of ninety-five to

seventy-eight. After 1994, though, work in the sector continued to decline

throughout Phase 2. In the period between 19971999, employment of automo-

tive workers had reached a historic low, losing about half of the jobs in the sector

that had existed in 1990.

Without a doubt, job loss in the sector can be attributed to technological

changes in production brought about by renewed foreign investment, as well



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as the effects of the growing recession imposed by the Cardoso government in

order to guarantee currency stability and his reelection. But metalworkers

unions faced other challenges as well.

With the Plano Reals monetary stabilization and opening of the economy,foreign capital again flowed to Brazil, but sought to diversify industrial invest-

ment geographically, with an eye to lowering laboring costs. Many automotive

and metalworking companies, for example, chose lower wage sites with

weaker union traditions outside the traditional industrial cities of the Sao

Paulo ABC, Belo Horizonte, or Rio de Janeiro metropolitan areas to build

new industrial plants and assembly units.

Consequently, cities that had been the traditional stronghold of the New

Unionism faced growing unemployment not only because of technological

changes and recession, but also due to these investments in other regions ofthe country. As authorities from less industrialized cities and states useddirect fiscal incentives to attract the new industrial investments, the older indus-

trial centers began to suffer gradual processes of industrial aging and deindus-

trialization. This was the case of the automotive and metalworking centers

located in the metropolitan areas of Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte.

A study of the evolution of industrial employment between large and small

cities9 points out the shift in both the number of jobs going from the larger cities

to the smaller ones and a shift in gross wages that accompanied these changes.

Graph 5 shows that in 1970, large cities accounted for 70 percent of jobs. By1998, small cities had succeeded in attracting 52.6 percent of jobs and large

cities were left with only 47.4 percent.

Between 1991 and 1998, for example, industrial Sao Paulo lost 474 metal-

working firms that relocated either to the interior of the state or to other states,

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representing a loss of over 25,000 jobs. In 1993, the metallurgical industries

employed 32.6 percent of the labor force in the city, by 1996 this had declined

to only 21 percent. The motivation was clear: While average wages in Sao

Paulo were around $1200 Reais, in the interior, average wages in the metallur-gical industry were approximately $840 Reais.10

The decline of industrial employment in large cities also reflected the shift

in wages from the capital cities to the interior (Graph 6). In 1970, large cities

accounted for 82.9 percent of the wages paid in the industrial sector and the

small cities for only 17.1 percent. By 1998, there had been a noticeable

change: Large cities now accounted for 64.3 percent and small cities increased

their share to 35.7 percent, having doubled their share of wages.

The migration of both preexisting and new industries to other regions away

from the traditional industrial areas of Brazil not only created immediate pro-blems of unemployment, deskilling, and the weakening of local unions, theCUT was also confronted with competing union interests. Mainstay unions in

the traditional industrial regions faced capital flight, while in the new indus-

trial parks elsewhere, with their weaker and less experienced unions and

workers anxious for new job opportunities, local unions became strong

lobbies for local government incentives to attract new industrial investments

away from the industrially concentrated Sao Paulo-Belo Horizonte-Rio de

Janeiro triangle. This placed the CUT in a delicate position between its tradi-

tional union bases and the emerging industrial unions in the smaller interiorcities. This dilemma meant that the CUT was unable to formulate a coherent

and cogent stance with regard to these competing interests.

The flight of industrial capital from the large metropolitan areas to the sec-

ondary cities dealt a serious blow to the capacity of core metalworkers unions to

respond to the multiple forces that stabilization and neoliberalism had brought

upon the working class. Facing a shrinking job market and deindustrialization in



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the traditional areas of union support, the metalworkers unions were con-

fronted with another challenge: the privatization of the steel industry.

Steelworkers were another base of union militancy in the 1980s.

Beginning with Fernando Collors presidency, Brazilian elites were com-mitted to privatizing the extensive government-owned industries and banks.

Debates within the CUT over privatization brought to a head the political

dilemma faced by progressive unionists with regard to the situation of

state-owned enterprises: On the one hand, these enterprises were economically

deficient due to excessive political patronage, mismanagement, featherbedding

practices, and a lack of market competitiveness; on the other hand, they rep-

resented a strategic sector in the national economy and secure jobs for large

numbers of workers. As the debates developed within the CUT against privati-

zation, it became clear that its leadership and political supporters, although posi-tioned against privatization, were unprepared to offer viable alternatives to thesale of these firms. On the other hand, local union leaders and steelworkers

largely favored privatization as the only form of correcting these distortions

and ultimately curtailing political patronage. At the auctions of steel mills,

local labor leaders and workers confronted CUT and student activists on the

streets protesting in favor of or against privatization. In the aftermath of these

confrontations, some local unions voted to leave the CUT, becoming indepen-

dent unions instead of joining the more conservative labor confederation,

Forca Sindical. Between 1991 and 1997, ten Brazilian steel complexes were pri-vatized in this manner.

The loss of the steelworkers from the CUT was another blow contributing

to the weakening of the metallurgical union base within the New Unionism.

Together with the problems of deindustrialization facing the metalworkers

unions in metropolitan areas, this severely limited this historical stronghold of

labor militancy.

The Crisis of Bank Workers UnionsLike the metalworkers, bank workers also faced changes that sapped thecapacity of the union leadership to mobilize: massive layoffs resulting from mon-

etary stabilization. For bank workers, the impact of monetary stabilization was

direct. Hyperinflation had made it necessary for banks to provide guaranteed

rapid banking transactions, given the high daily devaluation rates due to twenty-

percent daily inflation. Because of this, all banks, up until the 1994 Plano Real,

maintained a large contingency reserve of workers as tellers and in processing

functions to guarantee speedy transactions. For similar reasons, banks quickly

adopted computerized operations that made transactions more rapid, at thesame time that customer services remained highly labor intensive. Graph 4

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before 1994, banks had already established their bases for computerized

banking and doubled the number of ATMs installed as well as increasing auto-

mated transactions. As financial institutions automated their systems, bank

employment dropped correspondingly. Under a stabilized economy, bank auto-mation climbed, as indicated in the number of transactions carried on via auto-

mation by expanding the ATM system and creating online home and office

banking services. This, as Graph 7 illustrates, occurred between 1994 and

1996, marking a threshold in the restructuring of the banking labor market

with the further elimination of jobs.

The drastic decline in bank employment during the 1990s, meant that

employment in 1999 was only sixty percent of what it had been in 1990.

Needless to say, the massive dismissal of employees over the decade severely

weakened unions capacity to mobilize workers. Unions had been slow torealize that the computerization of the banking system during the hyperinflationyears would accelerate automation once economic stability was achieved. By the

time these effects of stabilization were recognized by the union leadership,

banks had already laid the groundwork for one of the most sophisticated

banking systems in the world, with a far smaller labor force.

In addition, unions were also confronted with the dilemmas posed by the

privatization of state-owned banks, which, like their counterparts in the steel

mills, were plagued with political patronage, corruption, featherbedding, and

deficit spending. Since state-bank employees had been the backbone of labormilitancy among the rank-and-file, bank workers unions were hard pressed to

maintain their influence on employees as public banks were sold to private inter-

ests and traditional labor relations in these banks changed drastically. Through

the 1990s, over ninety percent of state-owned banks were privatized, which



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meant the loss of the state-owned banks as the base for bank workers union

activism. Unlike the metalworkers, state bank employees, in conjunction with

their union leaders, strongly resisted privatization, but to no avail.

A fourth factor which impacted the mobilization capacity of bank workersunions was the financial crises which hit a number of large national banks after

the end of hyperinflation. The failure of these important private financial insti-

tutions in conjunction with the entry into the Brazilian market of foreign

banking interests further fueled the tendency toward greater concentration in

ownership of the banking system as new foreign banks purchased both publicly

and privately owned banks. The concentration of the industry in the hands of

transnational banks strengthened bank employers in relation to the more vul-

nerable workers, often leaving union leaders in disarray and without cogent

counterproposals.Confronted with this array of critical developments, the labor unions were

unable to formulate coherent political strategies to defend the interests of their

workers either with regard to job security or the effects of high-tech innovation.

As a consequence, bank worker leaders, though continuing to have a major role

in national and regional union politics, were less successful in mobilizing their

sector, facing defeat at the hands of both government authorities and employers.

The Case of Government WorkersOf the occupational groups with the highest propensity to strike in the 1980s,

government employees had in the 1980s the highest strike rates amongworkers. In 1988 and 1989, civil servants accounted for a little less than half

of all strikes in terms of man-hours lost,11 workers mobilized and strike fre-

quency; government employees far outpaced private sector workers in strike

activities by almost fifteen times.12

In national union politics, moreover, civil-service unions acquired a more

influential position within the CUT than their numbers warranted, occupying

national and regional directorships often disproportionately to their numbers.In 1995, of the twenty-five members of the national board of the CUT, eighteenwere representatives of public-sector unions and seven from the private sector;

and on several state boards, government union representatives held an import-

ant proportion of seats.13 Within government employee unionism, some occu-

pational groups stood out in their militancy and influence in union politics:

schoolteachers, healthcare workers, and employees in public enterprises

(bank workers, steelworkers, and petroleum workers).

Public-service workers were not immune to the effects of the post-Plano

Real currency stabilization. Bank and steel workers were severely curtailed intheir mobilization capacity due to the impact of privatization. Furthermore,

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Even though this caused considerable discontent among government employ-

ees, frequently available evidence of the fiscal crisis made civil servants less

predisposed to make proactive demands. In an absolute inversion of the high

strike rates of the 1980s, during the 1990s civil servants were conspicuouslyabsent from the strike rolls. Predominant demands among government

workers strikes were actions protesting the failure of either state or municipal

governments to pay their salaries or against the deterioration of working con-

ditions, especially in education and health. Only a few privileged sectors, like

the subway workers union of Sao Paulo, struck for better wages.

A third factor contributing to demobilization among public service workers

was the effects of decentralization of some government services like public

health, primary education, and social services. Among the main points on the

political agenda of the Cardoso presidency was the municipalization of thesethree services, obliging local authorities to assume more of the direct adminis-tration of these services, education, and public health. Social service unions

were not prepared to handle the effects of this shift in the locus of decision

making to local authorities and were faced with the difficult task of restructuring

for action on the local level. Both the logic of organization and recruitment and

the strategies of mobilization were clearly distinct depending on whether the

struggle was against a single state or federal authority or a multiplicity of

local authorities. In the 1980s, public service workers unions had been less suc-

cessful in organizing and mobilizing municipal workers as compared to state andfederal employees.14

Finally, government employee unions faced growing public disfavor,

including among private sector workers, who regarded civil servants as a privi-

leged category of workers. In 1995, a survey in Sao Paulo indicated that 66.4

percent of those interviewed felt that they were either very much or partially

hurt by public employee strikes. At the same time, 84.3 percent felt that employ-

ees of state enterprises were privileged workers. Even though 63.7 percent of

those interviewed felt that the real objective of civil servant strikes was poli-

tically motivated, 79.3 percent of the interviewees felt that government employ-ees in essential services had the right to strike over economic issues but, at thesame time, 56.3 percent were against political strikes.15 Confronted with a lack

of public support, government employee unions organized protests in this

period without any significant support from rank-and-file private sector

workers either, even though civil service unions occupied a significant position

in the upper echelons of the CUT.

Alternative Forms of Working-Class ContestationIf unions failed to respond to the impact of neoliberal policies on urban workers



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alternative forms of contestation that appeared on the national political scene

and mobilized workers in confrontational actions that successfully challenged

government authorities, three are worth noting: the Landless Workers

Movement (Movimento Sem Terra, MST) in the countryside; and two urbanmovements: the street vendors movement (Movimento de Camelos), and the

illegal van drivers movement (Movimento dos Perureiros).

The emergence of these forms of contestation in lieu of the traditional

labor movement reflected the demobilization of unions as workers turned to

other forms of organizing in their struggle for survival against the economic

adversities brought about by the new phase of capitalist development under

neoliberalism and globalization.

The Landless Workers Movement (MST)

Today, the MST represents the most articulated and extensive social move-

ment in Brazil and probably in Latin America. Although the MST had its

origins in the last years of the military dictatorship in the 1970s, it took on

new vigor with the consolidation of neoliberal restructuring of the urban

economy and the decline of urban union mobilization. As unemployment

increased in the cities, some workers with rural backgrounds were attracted

to the agrarian reform movement with the prospects of obtaining their own

small plots of farmland. The MST offered working-class and agrarian familiesthe opportunity to obtain reasonable economic security in agrarian settlements

by using the direct-action tactics of occupying unproductive estates and distri-buting the lands to families that the movement organized for the land seizure.

This approach made the MST the most influential social movement on the pol-

itical scene during the 1990s. This is vividly depicted by the data on MST

protests shown in Graph 8 for the 19901993 period (Phase 1). The data

indicates, both in the number of land occupations and number of families

participating in these occupations, that the MST began to gain momentum

towards the end of the hyperinflation period in 19921993. The effects ofeconomic instability on workers encouraged families with rural backgroundsto return to the countryside by joining the agrarian reform movement. Even

in the critical year of 1992 when President Fernando Collor was impeached,

unlike the labor movement, the MST maintained an increased pace of

mobilization.

One detects a rise in contestation in 1993, but during 1994 and 1995, when

the economy was finally stabilized under the Plano Real, MST protests declined,

though there was an important increase in the number of families joining these

occupations. While the level of mobilization in these two years remains lowerthan that reached in 1993, 1994 and 1995 represented a transition between

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Beginning in 1996, a year prior to the first recessive measures of the federal

government, the MST regained the momentum of 1993 with a significantincrease in land occupations and a corresponding increase in family participants.

As Graph 8 shows, 1996 marked a watershed in agrarian contestation. From this

year on, the MST progressively augmented its mobilization strength, as evi-

denced in the steadily increasing levels of occupations and family participation.

As the negative effects of stabilization on the urban and rural working classes

made themselves more evident, larger numbers of workers turned to the agrar-

ian reform movement not only as a reaction against increasing unemployment

and falling wages; but, also as a protest against the declining quality of life in

the slums and working-class neighborhoods of industrial cities.Yet the MSTs confrontational politics were not without negative conse-

quences. During the 1990s, MST land takeovers met with repression from land-owners, local police, and occasionally from the federal police. Under the Collor

government, the MST suffered its highest levels of imprisonment of leaders,

indicated in the data in Graph 9, when arrests were disproportionate to the

lower number of land occupations during that administration (19901992).

After the impeachment of Fernando Collor, under the interim Itamar Franco

presidency (1994 1995) arrests of MST leaders declined significantly and

remained at the lowest level until the end of the first term of FernandoHenrique Cardoso. During his second term, the number of arrests of MST acti-

8. MST Occupations and families participating, 19901999.



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family participation, and arrests conveys a clear picture of increasing levels of

MST militancy.

Because of the recession that began in 1997, resulting from the implemen-

tation of neoliberal policies, the MST increased its mobilization through a

national campaign for agrarian reform and became the predominant expression

of working-class discontent visible to the public in the cities. The MST inaugu-rated the tactic of mass marches from agrarian settlements to urban centers

such as Braslia and state capitals at first as a strategy of taking rural protests

against injustices from the countryside to an urban constituency and as a wayof championing urban workers by attacking neoliberal economics. Thus,

throughout the 1990s, it was the MST that organized the only successful mass

urban demonstrations against neoliberal policies and globalization.

In 1997, this included national marches to Bras lia, the first of which gath-

ered more than 40,000 landless protestors from across the country and served

to catalyze public support in the cities. As the 40,000 MST militants paraded

down the main avenue of the national capital in the direction of the Plaza of

the Three Branches of Government (Praca dos Tre s Poderes), thousands of

spectators lined the streets with baskets of foodstuffs for the hungry demon-strators, waving Brazilian flags and banners in enthusiastic support of the

agrarian movement and against the Cardoso administration Popular support

9. MST Occupations and arrest, 199099.

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After the first march on Brasilia, the MST subsequently sponsored periodic

mass demonstrations in Brasilia and other cities calling for agrarian reform and

inciting urban workers to react against recessive government policies. Skillfully

avoiding any criticism of the labor movements paralysis, the MST played a keyrole in directing rural and urban workers mobilization against neoliberal pol-

icies and globalization.

These marches expanded the MST mobilization repertoire, as landless

workers walking to capital cities recruited new demonstrators along the way;

and once in the cities, many unions joined the marches, enhancing this snowball

effect. In this manner, the MST combined mobilization tactics used in the coun-

tryside with mass demonstration tactics more familiar to urban workers as an

effective resource that allied rural and urban workers around agrarian reform

and against neoliberalism.By 1999, it was evident that the MST had become a political force to be

reckoned with. In that year, the MST conducted 489 land occupations with the

participation of 71,581 families. In addition to these actions, the MST joined

forces with the CUT, the Catholic Church, and opposition leftist political

parties (Partido dos Trabalhadores, Partido Socialista Brasileiro, Partido

Democratico Trabalhista, Partido Comunista and Partido Comunista do

Brasil) in organizing a national demonstration in Brasilia against unemploy-

ment and other forms of economic and social exclusion resulting from the

Cardoso governments policies. The March of 100,000 (Marcha dos 100 Mil)occurred on August 26, 1999, with approximately 130,000 protesters in

Brasilia. CUT sources estimated that some 73,000 demonstrators were bused

into the national capital from around the country. State organizers in

Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Goias, and the Federal District

together sent 1,468 buses. In many cities, buses were provided by local muni-

cipal authorities as their contribution to the protest against the governments

recessive policies.17

After the success of the August demonstration, the CUT attempted to

recreate the protest event in November of the same year by calling for a nationalwork stoppage against unemployment: The Day of National Work Stoppagesand Protest in Defense of Work (Dia Nacional de Paralizacao e Protesto em

Defesa do Emprego). Compared to the August action, the CUT event was by

all accounts ineffective (if not a failure) in mobilizing a significant number of

workers to strike. Even though the CUT programmed activities in each state

for the national stoppage, the very low turnout was symptomatic of its difficulties

activating worker mobilization.18

Another indicator of the underlying competition between the MST and the

CUTwas the latters foray into the agrarian reform field. With the success of theMST in the countryside and its more combative image, by 1998, both the CUT



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Confederation of Rural Workers (CONTAG, affiliated to the CUT), three by the

MAST, an agrarian reform movement supported by Forca Sindical, twelve by

independent worker groups supported by local labor unions, and one by the

Catholic Church.19

Attempts by unions to settle unemployed urban workers in agriculture

show the extent to which they were hard-pressed to develop coherent and for-

ceful actions in favor of the beleaguered workers in cities, but also attests to the

success of the MST, a new form of labor organization. As neoliberalism and glo-

balization took their toll among the working class, in addition to the MST, other

workers turned to other forms of actions to secure employment and defend their

interests. Another example of alternative worker organization is the case of

informal street vendors: generally industrial workers that lost their jobs and

invested their severance benefits in purchasing expensive manufactured goodsfor sale to middle class consumers.

Workers Contestation on the Edge: the Neo-Camelos

In the late 1990s, with formal unemployment at about twenty percent in large

urban areas, and the average time workers remained unemployed at around

one year in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, unemployed workers turned to

other ways to earn a living, like street vending. In the large urban areas, a

new type of street vendor appeared and became commonplace on busy commer-cial streets, often effectively competing with established businesses for custo-

mers. This current version of the street vendor (which I have chosen to callthe neo-camelo) represents a new and different form of what was often seen

in Brazil as marginal penny capitalism. The neo-camelos were by and large

industrial workers and their dependents who, having lost their jobs as a conse-

quence of firm restructuring, used the money received from their severance

benefits as working capital for the purchase of high-quality consumer goods

for sale on the street. Unlike the traditional street vendors or camelos, who

sold homemade foods, candies, trinkets, and cigarettes, the neo-camelos investedin small electronic appliances (telephones, radios, clocks, calculators, shavers,etc.), computer accessories (cords, pads, screen shades, etc.), battery-operated

toys, small leather goods, small tools, clothing, and the like. These new street

merchants, because of their numbers, very low operational costs and their con-

centration around busy commercial streets of the downtown areas, posed

serious competition to shopkeepers, who lost a significant portion of their clien-

tele to these new lower-cost rivals.

As retail business associations and leaders of commercial workers unions

pressured city authorities to remove the neo-camelos from sidewalks in front ofstores to less advantageous locations, vendors reacted in continuous confronta-

82 ILWCH, 72, Fall 2007


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arrests and the use of tear gas and riot police, these disturbances became part of

the scenario of Brazil.

Most data on social conflict in Brazil are hard to obtain. Reliable aggregate

data on the neo-camelos and their struggles is particularly difficult to find,because neo-camelos are often engaged in illegal activities, because they are

not licensed by government agencies, they evade taxes, and they sell cheaper

contraband and/or falsified merchandise. In spite of this, indications of the

growing importance of this segment of the working population could be inferred

from data taken from newspaper accounts of street-vendor encounters with

authorities and reports ofneo-camelos protests.

Graph 10 illustrates the growth of the neo-camelo as an alternative form

worker of worker organization and contention. Beginning in 1996, street

vendors showed a dramatic increase in their confrontations with authorities.More importantly, they showed the predisposition to engage in defensive collec-tive demonstrations. This is vividly depicted in the increase in 1996 to almost 350

incidents with authorities and almost 50 collective actions, as reported O Estado

de Sao Paulo.

After 1996, the number of conflicts remained high, declining slightly in 1997

and 1998, only to increase again in 1999. In 2000, the number of collective

actions declined significantly, while the level of incidents with authorities

remained relatively high in comparison with the previous years.

These neo-camelos represented a vociferous and demanding new servicesector segment of the working class. Furthermore, street vendors mobilizations

revealed the critical state of workers seeking gainful employment in activities

reserved for businesses. Neo-camelos faced opposition from merchants as



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well as from fellow commercial workers, who through their unions pressured

against the vendors. Commercial workers feared for their jobs as sales declined

in stores because of street vendors were selling goods at lower prices.

Furthermore, as street vendors saturated main streets, they made access toshops difficult, often discouraging customers from shopping in the center city

and thereby inducing them to shift their purchases to rival shopping centers else-

where instead. As a result, shop workers as well as storeowners have been

adamant in demanding that city authorities remove the thousands of street

vendors.

The labor movement was once again unprepared to respond to this new

form of protest from the unemployed. The Brazilian labor movement had

only just begun to focus its organizational efforts on recruiting unemployed

workers. Traditionally, both progressive (CUT) and conservative (FS) unionshad regarded as their rank-and-file only those workers employed in the indus-tries under their corresponding jurisdiction. Consequently, street-vendor con-

testation revealed an abyss between the organized labor movement and a

growing segment of the working class excluded from the reach of unions.

Furthermore, the CUT has traditionally been less concerned with having a

strong presence among commercial workers unions, leaving the bulk of these

unions to be recruited by the more conservative Forca Sindical. This has

meant that the CUT has largely been absent among workers in growing

sectors of the economy: The customer service industries into which the streetvendors attempt to enter through their penny-capitalist strategies.

The CUT, like Forca Sindical, once again found themselves caught in a

dilemma between two categories of workers, street vendors (unemployed

84 ILWCH, 72, Fall 2007


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industrial workers), and store workers; a contradiction which has become a

common element in the dilemmas arising from the present phase of capitalist

development. The issues raised by the unemployed neo-camelos point to

another lacuna in the Brazilian labor movement: its traditional disregard forurban policies, even though most of these policies affect the well-being of

the working classes. This has meant that labor was almost impotent in

interceding with local authorities, as the latter tried to deal with the social

and political effects of recession since it is in the local government sphere

that unemployed workers and their families seek welfare assistance and

look to the municipal government for redress. Consequently, one finds that

the labor movement has been unable to systematically bring to bear its

weight on local authorities as they seek solutions to the growing welfare

needs of the population. As one can see from Graph 10, as the conventionallabor movement declined in Phases 2 and 3, the neo-camelos show acorresponding increase in their efforts to defend their right to work, even if

only on the streets.

Workers Contestation on the Edge II: the Perueiros

A similar case was the situation of unemployed workers who used their sever-

ance benefits to buy passenger vans to transport paid riders, competing with a

faulty city transit system based on private bus companies. As theseclandestine transportation services provided by what Brazilians call perueiros

multiplied in the major cities throughout Brazil, the privately-owned bus com-panies and bus drivers unions joined forces to protest against this informal com-

petition which, moreover, did not comply with city vehicle-safety regulations,

transit management guidelines, nor paid benefits and taxes. Throughout the

latter part of the 1990s, cities were periodically shaken, by bus drivers strikes

against local authorities refusal to repress the perueiros and in defense of

their jobs in light of the decline in riders on the city buses.

Additionally, as authorities moved to curtail the illegal activities of vanowners, these workers responded through individual and collective resistance.In 1999 in the city of Sao Paulo alone, perueiros protested by burning fourteen

buses, sacking another seven buses, sequestering one bus, and slashing the tires

of another nine buses as they resisted arrest and the confiscation of their vans.

That year police apprehended 161 vans; and in the first two months of 2000,

police had already apprehended 1,420 vans, arresting their drivers.20

As in the case of the neo-camelos, data on perueiro contestation is scanty.

Newspaper accounts offer the most accessible and detailed information on the

extent of this form of working-class action (Graph 11). Newspaper reports onconfrontations between perueiros and city authorities and organized collective



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Once again, the labor movement stood on the sidelines in dismay at the

spectacle of unemployed workers in pitched battles against police, city inspec-

tors, and bus drivers demanding the right to gainful employment. As in the

case of the street vendors, the labor movement was neither prepared to representthe interests of the workers involved in this confrontation, nor equipped to inter-

fere in issues of urban planning, in spite of the fact that the very deficient urban

transit systems in Brazilian cities exclusively affect the Brazilian working class.

The neo-camelos and the perueiros, along with the growing number of

worker-owned microenterprises emerging from the ranks of the once employed

workers, add yet another problem to the already multifaceted challenges of the

Brazilian labor movement: the working-class entrepreneur.

Concluding Reflections: Informal-Sector Workers and the Working Class

This article has examined some processes that contributed to the weakening of

the mobilization capacity of the labor movement and the CUT. The effects of

monetary stabilization and economic restructuring under neoliberalism and glo-

balization produced fundamental contradictions within the labor movement that

were difficult to resolve. These contradictions mainly manifested themselves in

the demobilization of those sectors of workers that had been the mainstays of

CUT militancy: metalworkers, bank employees, and civil servants. As the

effects of the Plano Real monetary stabilization, neoliberal reforms and globali-zation negatively impacted these sectors, their unions ability to respond collec-

tively to these changes declined. We have outlined how economic changes in the1990s affected each sector and how laid-off, downsized, or otherwise unem-

ployed workers turned to other forms of work and collective action in seeking

to redress their grievances and to demand their integration into the economy.

Important alternative movements were developed by the MST in the coun-

tryside, and by unemployed, urban, informal-sector workers. The latter engaged

in unregulated street vending and transit activities and faced the opposition of

business, other unions, and local authorities, as these groups attempted to ridthe city streets of informal activities. In the ensuing conflicts between informalsector workers and municipal authorities, one can see how the contradictions

that made the labor movement less agile in representing the interests of

workers also created the conditions for the emergence of alternative forms of

worker organization and mobilization among these informal sector workers.

In examining some of these cases as alternative forms of working class con-

testation, a conceptual question becomes apparent: are these alternative forms of

contestation in fact manifestations of the working class? Some might argue that

these workers, in becoming small landowners or microentrepreneurs, have leftthe ranks of the working class and became part of the petit bourgeoisie. Of

86 ILWCH, 72, Fall 2007


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some key functions that give these economies the necessary flexibility in work

practices and labor relations within the context of economic and political depen-

dency. First, the informal sector acts as a prop to the formal sector inasmuch as it

holds in reserve those workers that have not been absorbed by formal employ-ment, allowing these workers to undertake alternative means of making a living

in the absence of substantial state social investments in unemployment benefits.

To a very real extent, Latin-American capitalists count economically and poli-

tically on the availability of informal-sector workers in periods of economic

expansion and on the possibility of dismissed workers moving into informality

during periods of economic contraction. In this sense, the informal sector pro-

vides a buttress for dependent formal economies with weak regulatory states

and high levels of income concentration.

Third, much of the work that is accomplished in the informal sector comp-lements the activities of many branches of the formal economy, as in the cases ofservicing and maintaining appliances, home and office repairs, and sales of small

manufactured consumer goods. In these cases, informal sector workers provide

alternative distribution channels for goods and services that would otherwise

require significant capital investments from established firms in order to

replace these informal workers. Thus, the informal sector constitutes an intricate

part of the machinery of the formal economy in Latin America, where workers

and consumers pass frequently and intentionally back and forth from one sector

to the other, making it impossible to argue that persons in one sector areworkers and those in the other are not.

This is shown by data from a 2003 Brazilian census bureau study of self-

employed workers in the informal sector.21 The survey results show that

workers are closely tied to the formal sector in that as much as forty-six

percent of the microentrepreneurs interviewed said that they entered the infor-

mal sector for lack of employment alternatives, as a form of complementing their

incomes, or as a good second job. These data illustrate the fluidity between the

formal and informal sectors from the workers perspective. At the same time, the

study shows that forty-nine percent of workers employed in these microenter-prises were relatives, given that microenterprises only accounted for forty-sixpercent of the total of self-employed ventures in the sector. The data illustrate

how in the lives of workers, both sectors are intertwined as people seek

gainful employment to support themselves and their families, finding work

opportunities in activities that complement the formal economy.

Conceptual approaches that describe class structures through typologies

based on work and management practices in the formal sector generally may

overlook the fact that many workers are simultaneously employed in the

formal sector, and jointly, with some relatives, engaged in informal workactivities. Classifying workers in this manner presupposes that the formal



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classification schemes would most likely place the informal sector activities at

the same level as those of the formal sector. Alas, in the developing countries

this would certainly make more sense inasmuch as a significant proportion of

workers are in the informal sector.In addition, this focus on work would highlight working-class families as

important mediators of the labor force in both sectors, especially considering

that many family members acquire their first work experiences in the informal

sector. In this sense, the working-class family is not only a central unit in the

analysis of work and consequently of the constitution of class structures in

Latin America, but is also the locus where the array of working-class economic

practices are developed and learned, and where working-class culture is also

produced and reproduced.22

The complexity of the dynamics of worker participation in the formal andinformal sectors makes it clear that by focusing exclusively on work as a jobdescription, as well as its tasks and location in the hierarchy of control of capi-

talist firms, one loses the importance of the notion of work as a set of collective

activities directed toward making a living. In the case of the working class, we

should focus not only on the individual worker in the place of employment,

but on that set of activities that compose the working-class familys efforts at

earning a living for the group as a unit. Furthermore, the socioeconomic

dynamics that link both sectors today in neoliberal Latin-American economies

are more complex than reflected by characterizations of individuals work situ-ations based on a model of the worker-employer relationship.

Today, new models of group cooperation are appearing within the informal

sector that may gradually become models for the organization of cooperative

work in the formal economy as well as provide alternative forms of organization

for political action in defense of these workers rights.23 Local and national gov-

ernments in the region, in response to these pressures, have attempted to incor-

porate informal-sector activities by creating special programs that promote

these work cooperatives and facilitate their legalization through public incen-

tives, tax reforms, and loans to microenterprises. These steps bring into the dis-cussion the need to reconceive the working class and the forms of its work andpolitical organizations.

NOTES

1. Salvador Sandoval, Social Change and Labor Unrest in Brazil since 1945 (Boulder, CO,1993), 180, 189.

2. Vito Giannotti, Forca Sindical: A Central Neoliberal de Medeiros a Paulinho (Rio deJaneiro, 2002).

3. The main studies in this perspective are: Armando Boito, Jr., Poltica Neoliberal e

88 ILWCH, 72, Fall 2007


27/28

4. For a detailed analysis of the 1980s, see Sandoval, Social Change and Labor Unrest,Chapter 7.

5. Departamento Inter-Sindical de Estatistica e Estudos Socio-Economicos, BoletimDieese-Anexo Greves do Mes (Sao Paulo, 19901999), calculations by author.

6. The only exception was 1992, when both strikes and the average number of strikersdeclined most likely since striking was replaced by the political turmoil over the crisis in thePresidency of Fernando Collor and his eventual impeachment.

7. Departamento Inter-Sindical de Estatistica e Estudos Socio-Economicos, BoletimDieese, Separata Julho: 5 Anos de Plano Real(Sao Paulo, 1999), Graphs 31, 11.

8. Sandoval, Labor Unrest and Social Change in Brazil Since 1945, Table 7.3, 163.9. Cleide Silva, Polos industriais empregam 45,9% menos, O Estado de Sao Paulo,

Nov. 8, 1999, B1.10. Em sete anos, SP perdeu 474 empresas metalurgicas, O Estado de Sao Paulo,

June 27, 1998, B4.11. Maria Herminia Tavares de Almeida, O Significado do Sindicalismo na Area Publica:

uma visao poltica in Sindicalismo no Setor Publico Paulista (Sao Paulo, n.d. [c. 1994]), 94.

12. Sandoval, Labor Unrest and Social Change in Brazil Since 1945, 164169.13. Arnaldo M. Nogueira, Novo Sindicalismo no Setor Publico in O Novo Sindicalismo

Vinte Anos Depois, ed. Iram Jacome Rodrigues (Petropolis, 1999), 5966.14. Sandoval, Labor Unrest and Social Change in Brazil Since 1945, 167169.15. Rebeliao do Fucionalismo: Maioria condena greve no servicos essenciais O Estado

do Sao Paulo, May 14, 1995, A14.16. Eles Chegaram La: O que fazer agora? Veja 30:16, April 23, 1997, 2636.17. See Protesto section in O Estado de Sao Paulo, August 26, 1999, A4A15.18. Protestos contra desemprego tem pouca adesao em todo o Pas, O Estado de Sao

Paulo, November 11, 1999, B5.19. Instituto de Terras do Estado de Sao Pauo, Mediacao no Campo: Estrategias de Acao

em Situacoes de Conflito Fundario, Caderno ITESP 6 (Sao Paulo, 1998), 3233.

20. Perueiro e preso com carro de placa clonada O Estado de Sao Paulo, February 4,2000, C4.

21. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatstica-IBGE e Servico Brasileiro de Apoio aPequenas e Micro Empresas-SEBRAE, Economia Informal Urbana (Rio de Janeiro, 2003).

22. Brigida Gracia, Humberto Munoz and Orlanda de Oliveira, Hogares y Trabajadores enla Ciudad de Mexico (Mexico City, 1982), 179180.

23. Other studies that focus on these issues are: John Cross, Informal Politics: StreetVendors and the State in Mexico City (Stanford, CA, 1998); Bryan Roberts, The SocialContext of Citizenship in Latin America International Journal of Urban and RegionalResearch (1996); Joel Stillerman, The Politics of Space and Culture among Santiago, ChilesStreet Market Vendors, Qualitative Sociology, 29:4 (December 2006): 507530.



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