The labor relations system that emerged from the 1943 Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT), promulgated during the Estado Novo dictatorship, has long been shrouded in a rhetorical fog that obscured on-the-ground realities in Brazil’s key industrial areas, such as São Paulo. This refreshing book combines personal interviews with, and research in a private archive of, the city’s leftist labor lawyers with unpublished records of the labor courts and the Delegacia de Ordem Política e Social. Larissa Rosa Corrêa cautiously frames her intervention in a vexed and ongoing historiographical debate between those who emphasize the forward-looking reformist nature of the system and those who cast a more critical eye on how it functioned, as I did in my 2004 monograph Drowning in Laws.
To her credit, Corrêa avoids being drawn into the rabbit’s hole of historiographical controversy. The book’s achievement lies in offering a richly and relentlessly empirical tour, from...
